broody

Modern chickens, like many modern farm animals, are the result of generations of selective breeding so complex and specialized that would make Mendel’s habit spin. Holstein cows are capable of making 200 pounds of milk a day. A cow in Africa that closely resembles wild cattle will make 2-4 pounds. Leghorn hens (the ones who lay the white eggs you see in the store) lay an egg almost every day for 2 years. Wild chickens don’t do this. They, like other wild birds, breed, lay some eggs and then hatch them. They do this once or twice a year. Most egg laying breeds of chicken (oh, have I mentioned that we’ve selectively bred different kinds of chickens for meat and egg production) don’t even possess the instinct to sit on eggs and hatch them. They lay more eggs that way. But, while I like a fried egg as much as the next person with a normal cholesterol level, I still think it’s a little bizarre that we’ve selectively bred animals that cannot reproduce without human help (how Jurassic Park is that shit?).

Yet, in spite of this careful breeding, sometimes a chicken will decide that she wants to hatch some eggs. This is called “going broody”. A broody chicken will stop laying eggs and start sitting on some. She stays on the nest almost all the time taking care of them, making sure they’re warm, turning them, getting pissed at you if you try to take them away. Then, after 21 days, the eggs hatch and she takes care of the chicks. Ahh, the miracle of life.

But, in my experience (and the internet’s too if you google “broody hen”), it’s not very easy to get a broody chicken to get all the way to the chick part of that little story. Last year I had a hen go broody and I figured I’d just leave her in the nest with her eggs and Mother Nature would take her course and I’d have baby chickens. NOT. She was okay for a few days and then some other chickens got in the nest with her and laid more eggs in with the ones she had and I tried to pick them out and then mark the originals. But then a few more days later she started eating the eggs and making a mess in the nest. Gah. So I took away the eggs and started taking her out of the nest box every time I saw her in there. She got over her broodyness.

Now she’s broody again and I am better prepared. I made her a little house of her own so she wouldn’t be disturbed by other hens, gave her some eggs and put her in it, but she didn’t like it and and started walking around looking pissed instead of sitting on her eggs. So I put her back with the other chickens. Then I tried the same thing at night – still no luck.

Today I tried something different. I put a box filled with straw inside the nest box in the main house she really liked. Then tonight, I took the whole box, the eggs and the chicken together to the little broody house. Minimal disturbance! She didn’t jump right up looking mad first thing, so my fingers are still crossed. We’ll see what she’s doing in the morning. I hope I can coax a natural instinct out of my chicken!