Breaking the broody cycle

I have a girly gone broody and I'm not ready yet this year for babies. Usually I have just left my broodies and kept removing the eggs and lift them out a few times a day for food water and exercise. It seems such a shame for them to spend up to 4 weeks sitting on nothing and to hatch nothing at the end.

A friend tells me that she breaks the cycle by putting a "broody wanabe" into a pen with just water for a day and this breaks the cycle. It doesn't seem like a pleasant day for a chicken but does it do them any harm and would it work anyway?

I have heard that putting an ice back on her underneath can help cool a hen down (obviously wrapped in a tea towel or similar as you'd do with a child's sprained ankle etc). 

The 'broody box' is a good solution especially as the nights are a bit chilly still but echo the need for food and water. 

Or just keep turfing her out of her nesting box - close the house if the weather's nice and put their food and water outside.  The laying hens will find somewhere to lay but it might be enough to break her.

Not sure what hens you have but I have silkies and it seems almost impossible to stop them going broody!!!

blimey!
she's very intent on being broody, isn't she?!
 

Well the extra weight behind the wood blocking up the nestbox held over night and she is hovering around the henhouse as I type. I'm guessing that she will go back in there and then she'll be back in the sinbin.

can I borrow her? she sounds like a good un!
I once used one of those wine cooling sleves, with straw on top -I thought it was a cracking idea, didn't work tho..... :blink:

My grandfather always used to line the nest box with an egg tray. if they cant sit comfortabley they give up. It was in the early 70s but he would take it off the nest and shut it in a small pen with just a nest box with the egg trray in it food and water. seemed to do the trick after a day