Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: viettaclark on December 15, 2011, 17:02
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Are Speckledies prone to broodiness?
I had terrible trouble trying to break her only a couple of months ago when she'd been broody for 5 weeks.
The immersion in a bowl of cold water eventually worked after 8/9 tries over a whole day so I did the same today, hoiking her out of the nest box which she'd lined with chest feathers.
The 5th time I hoiked her out and she'd laid an egg!!!!
I felt soooooo bad! However the dunking seems to have worked so I've nipped it in the bud, I think.
Is this breed very prone?
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Are Speckledies prone to broodiness?
I had terrible trouble trying to break her only a couple of months ago when she'd been broody for 5 weeks.
The immersion in a bowl of cold water eventually worked after 8/9 tries over a whole day so I did the same today, hoiking her out of the nest box which she'd lined with chest feathers.
The 5th time I hoiked her out and she'd laid an egg!!!!
I felt soooooo bad! However the dunking seems to have worked so I've nipped it in the bud, I think.
Is this breed very prone?
I do think Speckledies can be prone to being broody however lets hope they aren't prone to hypothermia because dunking them in water in winter is very dangerous and I shiver to think what suffering this might cause. I wouldn't recommend it.
HF
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Mine was. I gave in to her after two months and put some fertile eggs under her. She hatched them out and was a brilliant mum! Coolest thing I've ever seen!
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I'm shutting off the coop when everyone has laid and blocking off the nest box at night. Although she gets to sit in the nest box all morning, she's out ranging with the others for the rest of the day and has to sleep in the coop with them. She is very manic, rushing about twittering and checking if the pop hole is open every 5 minutes.
Her comb is still red and I found one of her eggs on the rungs that had been laid very early this morning.
So although she has ALL the signs she can't be broody?!!
Weird.....
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My hens keep laying for a few days after they are showing every other sign of being broody. I think they are just finalising their clutch before they plan to sit on it. I find if I can break them of their broodiness in this first few days it can be quite successful. Once they stop laying it's much harder!
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She's got full blown broodiness now and it's driving me and the other hens mad. They're laying round the garden again.
I'm going to put her in the spare run tomorrow with the pop hole closed and let her go quietly insane, then bring her back at night with the nest box blocked off, to sleep with the others (that coop isn't fox proof) and keep doing it.......
Won't be getting a Speckledy again.....
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You might have more success if you can put her in a suspected crate with a wire bottom. If she has no nesting material at all, it will cool her off quickly, but without getting her feathers wet :)