Broody Hen a.k.a Nasty Bit*ch on the nest
Q. How do I know if my hen is broody?
1. She’s glued to the nest. Kick her out and she’ll puff up like a soccer ball, spread her wings, make a continuous bok-bok noise, and stomp around telling everyone how sensitive she is. Within minutes, she’ll boomerang back to the nest.
2. You’ll need welding gloves to collect eggs under her, otherwise she’ll happily take a chunk out of your hand!
Q. What do I do? Do I just leave her there?
You’ve got options, depending on whether you want to increase your flock.
Option 1: Give her fertile eggs
This works best if she’s only just gone broody — it won’t extend her brooding time too much. Keep in mind, hatch rates depend on how the eggs were sourced (shipped or not) and the skill of your hen. Always candle around day 8–10 to check how many embryos are developing — nothing worse than letting her sit on blank eggs and do all that hard work for nothing.
⚠️ Note: All eggs can hatch male chicks, so make sure you have a plan for the boys if you can’t keep roosters.
Option 2: Give her day-old chicks
A great choice if she’s already been sitting for a while (so she doesn’t need to sit another full 3 weeks and raise chicks). You also control the flock size, and can even choose sexed chicks if you can’t keep roosters.
Best added at night while she’s asleep. and ideally chicks should be under a week old. That said, we’ve had multiple customers successfully add chicks in bright daylight. Once, a customer even added 12-day-old chicks to a broody hen — yes, technically they were too old, but that’s what was available, and the customer insisted. If it hadn’t worked, the chicks would have been raised in a brooder. Surprisingly, the hen accepted them straight away! Meanwhile, we’ve also had freshly hatched chicks that the hen refused to take. Moral of the story: if she’ll take them, she’ll take them.
Q. I don’t want to increase my flock. What should I do?
A. Break the broodiness.
Chooks aren’t like humans — it’s not about “Oh, I love babies, I want to raise my own children.” Broodiness is purely hormonal. When daylight increases and temperatures rise, their bodies flip a switch — it has nothing to do with emotion.
Broody → Hatching mode means:
🔥Body temperature rises to keep eggs warm
🕒They stay on the nest 23.5 hours a day, barely moving
🪺They leave only briefly for food, water, & world-record sized big 💩s, then right back to the nest.
It’s extremely physically draining. Leaving a hen broody for too long is unhealthy — she can get very sick and, in extreme cases, may even die from lack of nutrition.
Q. How do we break broodiness?
A. Please don’t put hen in a bucket of cold water. That is cruel. Her body temperature need to come down by flicking her hormone switch off in her head, not from outside force such as ice cold water.
“I’ve heard putting a wire cage in the coop/shed will break the brood.. It didn’t work!”
That’s because placing the cage in their familiar, quiet coop gives them a “private broody suite,” which hens love. That will never work.
✅ Put the wire cage somewhere exposed, with lots of human traffic — e.g., on a balcony or in front of a door — so she feels she has “ZERO” privacy. Provide food and water, and give her a full 7 days. Her hormonal “broody switch” should turn off, and she’ll happily return to her kid-free life.
And one last,
Broody Hen Season = 🔴Red Mite Season 🔴
These bloody suckers love the warmth and humidity of a broody hen. They’ll feed on her relentlessly, and she’ll sit there regardless. Red mites can easily kill a hen or newly hatched chicks. PLEASE check for mites at night, stay vigilant, and act fast.
