When Nature Takes Over The Nest Box

Transcript

What Broodiness Is And Why

How To Spot A Broody Hen

Health Costs Of Letting It Go

Humane Ways To Break Broodiness

Breeds That Go Broody Most

Letting Her Hatch Chicks Safely

Listener Email And Wrap-Up

Country Accent Story At Crawfish Boil

Host Housing For Women Golfers

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Hey guys, and thank you so much for tuning in. And it is late spring here in central Louisiana, and it's the time of year that if you got fall chicks, that you are probably starting to get eggs now. If you got some spring chicks, they're turning into pullets, maybe just getting ready to lay those first bunches of eggs. It is an exciting time, especially if you're a brand new chicken owner, because it's going to be really cool. Start getting those first bunch of eggs. Some people call them uh my first thousand dollar egg, depending on how much you spent on getting everything up and going for your latest hobby and obsession. But it's also broody season. And if you do not know what a broody hen is, stay tuned because one day you are going to find out on your own with your own girls. But a broody hen is just simply a chicken that's entered a hormonal state where she's driven to sit on eggs and hatch them. Doesn't matter if the eggs are fertile or not, she is going to want to do this. And during this time, her focus shifts from laying eggs to incubating them and hopefully raising chicks. Now, if you want to have chicks, that's a really cool thing. Of course, you need a rooster to do that. If you don't want to hatch out chicks, which for the last uh couple of years I have not wanted to hatch anything out, it is not a cool thing to have. It is something that's detrimental to you, your bird, your eggs that she's sitting on, getting them hot, you know, her overall health, everything. But this is controlled by hormones. You can't blame the chicken for just thinking, oh, I think it's time to do that. Uh I think the hormone is called prolactin or something like that. And this behavior is just natural and it disrupts everything around the homestead, everything around with the other birds. Uh she just won't get off the nest. So the first thing you want to know is how do I know if my Bren is really broody, or she's just sitting on the nest for a while? And so she the behavioral signs are number one, constant nesting. She just stays on the nest box for long periods of time. Usually she's going to stay on there at nighttime as well, when normally she would get up and go up uh into the roofs. She doesn't want to leave. You could reach under and collect eggs, and she just remains sitting there. She's going to look aggressive at you. She may peck, she's going to grout, she's going to puff up her feathers. All of this are signs that she doesn't want to leave, and you are really bothering her. And that low clucking sound. A broody hen is going to go. Just make that sound, and it's just letting you know you need to get the hell away from me. I'm trying to be a mother here and have and brood some chicks. They have a warm underside. If you would fill underneath them, it's called the broody patch. A lot of times they're going to lose feathers here because they want to make skin to egg contact with their eggs. Uh she's she eats less. She drinks less. She defecates much less. She only gets off her nest maybe once a day, maybe twice if you're lucky, to do these things. Her droppings, when she does uh defecate, are usually larger and smell awful. It's just, oh, it's just just broody poop is just the worst thing ever. Uh, it can take a toll on on your girls, girl's body. She's gonna lose weight because she's not eating like she should. She's gonna be dehydrated because she's not drinking like she should, especially if this is very hot or humid weather. This is not gonna be good at all for her. She's gonna have muscle loss, she's gonna have weakness, she's gonna be it have increased parasite exposure because she's sitting in one spot, so this can attract mice and lights, and she's gonna stop laying eggs during this time, so you're gonna lose, lose eggs. And there's a definite health decline. And you know, uh a chick takes 22 days to hatch. And you think, okay, well, if I let her just do this broody thing in 22 days, it's gonna be over. Well, it doesn't work that way. What signals a hen to come out of brooding is the eggs actually hatching. And if there's no eggs hatching under, she may stay that way for 30, 40 days. I I don't know. I I've never I've never let one go go too terribly long. I always try to break my hens uh from from being broody. And there's many ways you can look online to see how to break your hands. Some of them are downright cruel, uh like dipping them in into uh cold water. Uh that is not to me a very humane way of doing it. I think Dahlia with Chicken Landia uh actually puts hers in a little crate and takes them for a car ride, you know, thinking, well, okay, this is not this is not normal chicken stuff right here, so I think I'm gonna get out of being broody. I've never been able to snap one out uh that quick for it. Uh, but you know, some of the things that you can do is try, you know, closing off the nest box. If you only have one or two hens, maybe that you can do that. I can't do that because if I close off the nest box to one, I end up closing everything to everybody. You can maybe encourage her to stay active, you know, go out there if you're able to, go out there several times a day, take her off the nest, walk her around the yard, set her down somewhere. If you don't have a yard that they can run around in, take her out, put her in the run, do that several times a day, just trying to encourage her from getting uh off that nest. Have readily food and water available every time you take her off the nest because that's going, you know, that's something that's maybe more pleasing to her to have this ready. Uh, you want to have a good, well-ventilated cage if you're going to try to break her brood. Some people use cages with a wire bottom so that they can get air circulating underneath her, and that would, of course, you wouldn't need to be elevated if you put her in that. I I don't use this exact method, but I do separate my hens. What I do, my grow out pin is also my broody chicken gel. Okay, so if I get a broody hen, sometimes two at a time, uh, I will take them and I'll put them in the uh grow out pen. In the grow out pen, there's no nest inside there for them to sit on. They do have access to clean water and food all the time, but they don't have that nest, and it takes them out of their usual environment. But what it also does, they still have access to the rest of the chickens. They go outside of it, they can scratch around on the ground, they can see and interact with the rest of the flock, but they cannot get to the nest boxes and they cannot get to their normal roof. So this is definitely takes them out of their normal routine, and this is something that's you know, you you can use. It's a slower process, but it's the most humane process that I know of. I've tried to do it for five days, I've tried to do it for ten days. Every time it takes two weeks. And and eventually every year, I'm gonna mess up and say, look, this end is really broken. You know, it's been eight days, I'm taking her out. Well, when you do that, two or three days goes by and all of a sudden, bam, she jumps right back in and she's broody all over again. So for me, it is a solid two weeks to put them in there. Even though I don't want to, I feel sorry for my hens whenever they do that. Uh, the only time that I will generally take them out early is if they start laying eggs again. They'd start doing that. You pretty well know that they're done. But you don't want to do anything harsh, you know, like the ice bass or starving them for water or food. Or when you take them out of the nest, throw them sky high. I've heard people throwing them off of barns, you know, anything to kind of shock them and get them get them out. You know, stressing your chicken is not the way to get her out of being broody. It's a normal process, it's hormones that kick in. It's it's what nature does. You can't blame the bird for for being what she's supposed to be, but you don't want her to be that way if it's not something that you want to have. You don't want to hatch chicks, or then you want to take her off. If you don't have a rooster, you're certainly not going to get chicks. So you want to take her off. You want to break that broodiness. And for me, that chicken gel grow-out pen is what I use. Now, there's birds out there who are more broody than other birds. Silkies, very, very broody. I I swear you could probably put an alligator egg under a silky and they're gonna hatch it. Uh coachins and orpingtons are usually very fairly broody, Brahmas and Sussex ostrolips are kind of from what I've never had an ostralot, but I've heard people say that, you know, that that have flocks of them, two or three of the birds, you know, would be broody, but not all of them. And it also just, you know, the part the birds itself. I have in my flock a Buff Orkington, and I don't think she's ever gone broody. And she's one of my older chickens, she's probably six years old by now, five years old, something like that. She's never gone gone broody. If you have leghorns, ain't gonna happen. That broodiness have been bred out of leg horns over the leg horns over the eons because they are just strictly created as a chicken to to just spit out eggs. And and leg horns are not gonna go broody. Uh roll it and reds are not necessarily a broody chicken chicken and isabrown sex links are not you know known as being broody, broody chickens. So, you know, these if you if you want don't want to have broody chickens, that's some of the uh varieties you can get. If you do want them, silkies and coaching's and orpingtons and what have you are what you want to look for. It just depends on really what you want to do. But trust me, any chicken can go broody. Just because they're part of the spectrum that usually doesn't, you know, it doesn't really mean anything. When you want them to be broody, you know, and when you want to do this with with your chick and you don't have an incubator, you have that natural incubation with with a with a chicken, there's no better care than that chick can get than it can get from a mama hen. Uh I don't care how good of a chicken parent you are, taking the chicks out and putting them in a brooder and just just spoiling them and taking care of them every day. You have a higher survival rate, you have stronger health, better growth when you have that hen raising the birds. It's just it's what nature intended, you know. So if you plan to let her hatch, you want to make sure she's got fertile eggs, you want to put her in a quiet, safe place and have food and water nearby and just kind of monitoring your your bird. You want to check her out every day. Excuse me. Uh if you can, check her for spare parasites, spread her feathers apart, look in there, make sure you don't see any mites or lice or anything like that. And if no eggs are being hatched after 22 days or so, you you may want to think about breaking breaking her cycle. Again, you may have a flock that you need to protect her from from whenever she she uh nests. Uh, usually when you have a chick chicken with chicks, uh the flock is not really going to mess with the chicks because since she's part of the flock, they become part of the flock, but you really do need to monitor that closely. This is not at all uh written in stone. And the feed that she has needs to be a very high-quality feed to support her during this time. So just just remember this is a natural thing for for hands to go through, and it's very intense. Their priorities completely change. Uh they get they get aggravated. They might even say they're really pissed off whenever you go to mess with them. But understand the signs and the effects and how you can manage this. If you want to have this happen, then you're gonna really love it uh to see that that miracle of of nature for whenever they hatch eggs. But if not, you really need to consider consequences for the chickens and think about breaking her from it. Hopefully, you understand uh what I've been talking about today with Rudy Hens. As always, let me hear from you. I'd love to hear your comments. Uh, if you have a subject matter that you would like me to talk about, if you want to get on the show and talk about your chickens, I want to hear from you. And that's that is chickens everyday at yahoo.com. It's chickensplural everyday at yahoo.com. Let me hear from you. Thank you so much. Appreciate you guys more than you know. Bye-bye. Well, guys, but before I uh I end the program, I have got to tell y'all a funny story that happened with me recently. My wife and I, one of the things that we do, all right, let me back up. My wife, Sarah, she volunteers at the Manor House, which is a local food bank here that just gives food out for people every day. And I mean when I say every day, I mean every single day they're out there doing this. The the lady who runs this, Miss Jessica, uh great person, her and her family. And every year they host a professional golf tournament here here locally. Now, this golf tournament uh and it's for ladies, and it's not a LPGA, it is two steps down, two ladders down. These young women are trying to make it to the LPGA, and as such, you as you can imagine, the prize money reflects the fact that they are two steps away from getting on to the big tour. But nonetheless, it's up to them to pay for everything. They have to pay their own entry fees, that they take care of just everything as far as expenses go. Well, they have a program that people can do what's called host housing, and you can volunteer to host some of the players, and there's a few requirements before they let you do that. There are not many at all. Uh, every story that I've ever heard about people hosting has always been great because these young ladies are so grateful to have someone to do this that they want to help make sure that they contribute back, and they're gonna you know, usually take care of their own cleaning their rooms and being courteous and you know, all the things that you would hope and and that you would expect. Well, one of the things that we do with our girls, because we've you we've hosted the same ones for a couple of years now, and this is central Louisiana, crawfish boys are a big thing, and this tournament is right in the middle of crawfish season for us, so we host a crawfish boy. Usually we let them bring, you know, invite some of the more ladies that are on tour and around town that they can come. So a bunch of them came this year, and we had just, you know, I met some young ladies from, I mean, Finland, Indonesia, uh just all kind of really crazy places. I think there were 17 countries that were represented. You may have noticed that I have a little bit of a country accent. Now, I don't ever think of myself as having an accent, just like you probably never think of yourself as having an accent. And every now and then I get reminded uh when I when I do. And I was making a point during the crawfish ball and talking to some of these young young women, uh, and one of them made a note that you know that she really liked my accent. And I said, Really? Do you think I have an accent? She said, It's country. I said, So you think I have a country accent? And this is this young lady was from Indonesia, and to me, her English was even better than mine. And she said, No, sir, you don't have a country accent. You have a country accent. And the whole table just erupted in laughter and kind of put me in my place a little bit. So I guess maybe I do have a country accent. So if you guys think that I do, let me hear from you. It's kind of funny whenever you hear that from someone who's, I mean, not even from this country, and then they realize that I have, you know, such an accent. So I thought that was really cute. I thought maybe you'd want to hear from hear this story. So I talk with you guys soon. Again, let me know what y'all want to hear. Okay, one more time, and I promise, I really promise, this is the last interruption. I'm fixing to be over with this, but it just dawned on me that maybe there's one or two or three of you around that are close to one of these golf courses where these ladies uh come. And this is called the Women's All-Pro Tour, WAPT. Uh, the biggest sponsor is Annika Sorinston. She is a famous lady golfer from uh, I guess the 80s and 90s back there. She was just really amazing, and it's amazing the work that they do. So you can look those people up, the WAPT Women's All-Pro Tour, and you can sign up for host housing. You'll have someone give you a call, tell you what the requirements are. And they're very little. You just have to furnish them a room and a bed. You know, you don't have to do their washing, you don't have to cook and clean for them. Most people want to do that. But I mean, you don't have to do all of those things. So look that up if this is something that would interest you, because it is really a sweet, heartwarming thing to do. You just feel great whenever you do it. And whenever they leave, there's always hugs and everything because everybody comes so close uh to have these ladies uh come participate in these tournaments and and live with them for a little bit less than a week. So, anyway, really and truly last time. Thank you so much. Bye bye.