broody hen now egg eating

I've been lurking here for a while now picking up lots of helpful info, but I would appreciate a little specific advice please?


We have 3 black rocks, which we've had for about 3 months (although they are about 18 months old) They have laid consistently since we got them, but one of them (we call her big black, not very good at names!) has gone broody. We have been chucking her out of the nest box at every opportunity and shutting them all out of the coop, once the eggs have been laid, but we are now well into out 3rd week of broodiness.

One of the other chickens (little black!) lays quite early in the morning, so we can't get to it before broody chicken does and yesterday we discovered that she had eaten the early egg. We managed to get the later egg off her, but she had pecked a hole in it. This morning she was covered in egg and she had obviously eaten little blacks early egg again.

Someone has suggested that she might have been trying to help her chicks out (since we are probably over 21 days), which is rather sad, if true.

It think I have come to the conclusion that I need to isolate her, although I have no easy way of doing that. I was thinking of a rabbit run or something like that, but would appreciate any suggestions?

The other question is how long does she have to stay isolated? Is there some way of knowing when she has got over it?

Any suggestions would be very gratefully accepted.

Sarah C

Yes, she's broody and if you don't want her to hatch fertile eggs then you will have to do your best to keep her out of the nest box I'm afraid.

llluff

You can only keep hoying her off the nest at every opportunity or you could put her in a run on her own with food and water so she gets fed up. If I don’t really know what to say to you about the egg eating as my broody ate three of her eggs broke a fourth open which I managed to save and killed the fifth and then threw it out of the nest.

I have been told by several people that when a hen pecks her eggs its because she is lacking calcium. and that you should allow her some old shells.or some thing with lots of calcium. I have also been told that laying pellets provide all the vitimans they need. Good Luck hope it helps u.

Me too Vember