NEW! Fowl Moods
Inside the Mind of a Broody
The character Heathcliff, in Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, was broody beyond words. He’s so inwardly focused that he almost stops eating and drinking entirely. He’s unfriendly when approached. He only wants to be alone.
If you have chickens, this behavior may sound familiar even if you don’t live in an estate on the moors. Whether confronting a hen or a Heathcliff, you don’t want to ruffle their feathers.
So, assuming your hen’s broodiness isn’t sparked by a long-lost love who’s gone and married another, what has put them in such a mood? And, even more important, what the heck do you do about it?
The Source of Broodiness
Most certainly, your broody hens are reacting to the production of the hormone prolactin.
This is the same hormone that makes mothersto-be of the human persuasion express the need to “nest.” Hopefully, the expectant mothers in your life won’t peck you or utter a throaty growl when you come near. But this condition can cause one to go full-on mama bear under the right — or wrong — conditions.
It helps to know that the more time spent brooding, the more prolactin your hen produces. Conversely, levels of prolactin fall quickly if the behavior is interrupted early. Catching your broody hen right away can make it easier and quicker to break the mood and get them back to laying eggs.
Among wild birds, when the male does most of the nest building or incubation, such as bowerbirds and ovenbirds, they are the ones with the higher prolactin level. Some chicken breeds, such as Leghorns, produce such small
amounts of prolactin that they rarely go broody: a commercial chicken-keepers delight. Silkies have plenty of prolactin which makes them very attentive mothers.
Selective breeding has gone a long way to reduce brooding. Stone Age chickens were like other wild birds. The lengthening days of spring promoted the laying of a clutch of eggs, which promoted production of prolactin. With the mother hen nesting and protecting hatchlings, they could grow up over the plentiful summer.
But that schedule doesn’t sync up well with domestication. Farmers selected for birds with longer laying seasons and less inclination to nest. That process got us where we are now: Most modern breeds produce lower levels of prolactin so that long-term broodiness isn’t an issue, and egg-laying can go on for most of the year instead of just the spring. However, when hens do go broody, it’s still often in the spring.
First Clues
After trying to persuade ourselves it was just a coincidence that we saw Black Dahlia, our Black Copper Marans, in the same nest box four days in a row, we realized she had gone broody. She was sitting on a few of her chocolate brown eggs. With no roosters, the eggs aren’t fertile, so they won’t hatch. And if they don’t hatch, a broody hen never gets the maternal memo to leave the nest except for infrequent snack breaks.
A healthy hen can stand the limited rations for the 21 days it takes to hatch fertile eggs. But with no endpoint, she could suffer or even die from dehydration or starvation. A hen-keeper has to break this mood to save the hen.
Some claim to have good luck breaking the mood by tossing the hen out of the nest box a couple of times. I think this can work if done right away, before prolactin levels build up. But we’re not always that quick on the draw. That’s when we use “apartment therapy” to dial down the prolactin.
Apartment Therapy
Hens are communal creatures. Perhaps you’ve shared a group house when you were young. That’s kind of like a coop, with everyone jostling for food from the fridge, trying to sleep while listening to the others settle in (or not). But when a housemate stays cooped up in their room for days on end, you know it’s time for an intervention.
A good talking-to or a change in the chore schedule won’t work for hens, though. What they need is to be in their own space; one that doesn’t resemble an enclosed nest box. My wife and I repurpose a large folding dog crate
to sequester a broody hen every other year or so. We say they’re getting some apartment therapy. It does feel a bit like punishment to sequester a hen like that, but the alternative would be worse. The dog crate gives her room to move around, and she is still within sight, sound and smell of her flock. She also has plenty of shelter, food, treats and water.
The dog crate is big enough to hold a retriever or German shepherd. I’ve gathered several crates of this style and size from the curb. I keep the best one and pass on any others to other chicken-keepers. The heavy-duty wire cages have a hinged door in one side and a hinged top panel. The best dog crates are cleverly designed to lay flat for storage.
Through the open top lid, we put a couple stacks of bricks in at one end of the crate. That allowed us to add a small waterer and feeder at chest height for Dahlia. Raising them up meant we wouldn’t be continually cleaning out debris from her scratching. We covered the crate with a tarp against rain and sun. Laying a notched 2-by-2 through the crate at the other end gave her a place to roost, but no secluded space in which to nest.
After a week in the dog crate, we let her out, but she went right back to brooding, so we hadn’t waited long enough. There was too much prolactin in her because we hadn’t acted soon enough. Another few days of apartment therapy — with occasional field trips into the pen — did the trick. Her mood broke, and she started laying eggs again, as if nothing had happened.
Other Uses for a Dog Crate
A dog crate isn’t just useful for breaking broodiness. New hens, pullets or chicks all need a safe space that allows your original birds to get acclimated to the newcomers without pecking at them. Chickens have short memories, and after a week or so, the veteran hens will look at the rookies and think, “You’ve always been here, right?”
In a worst-case scenario, one of your hens may have an infectious disease and need to be quarantined from the rest of your flock. At some point in your life as a hen-keeper, you may want a sizable, durable, cost-effective isolation chamber for medical reasons.
Broodiness Done Right
You can also turn broodiness to your advantage. If you can get your chicken-lovin’ little hands on some fertile eggs, you can flag them with a marker (so you don’t mistakenly kidnap them into the kitchen). Then let your broody hen incubate them for three weeks. Once hatched her prolactin levels will persuade her to take care of the chicks as if they were her own and safely introduce them to the flock — yes, even the 50% of them that will turn out to be young roosters. But at least those won’t have a surplus of prolactin.
Frank Hyman has a bachelor’s of science degree from North Carolina State University and is the author of the DIY book Hentopia: Create Hassle-free Habitat for Happy Chickens; 21 Innovative Projects.