Broody Hens and Little Britches

Double the trouble

I’m a slow learner.

Whenever one of our girls goes broody—that is, their mommy instinct kicks in and all they want is to sit on the nest and hatch chicks, even though sometimes there’s no egg(s) in the nest box—I keep thinking it’s just a fluke, the hen will soon work through it, then we’ll be DONE. But no.

I’ve mentioned before that our flock of 5 are all Buff Orpingtons, a breed that’s prone to broodiness. And since mid-spring, we've already had 3 hens going broody.  We’ve been calling all the broody girls “Little Miss Broody” because we can’t really tell them apart. 

Except for one: the most recent brooder. She's a hen John calls “Little Britches.”

An American history buff, John named her after one of his favorite personages from the Old West: the diminutive cattle rustler nicknamed “Little Britches,” a teenage girl who apparently was about 4 foot 8 inches, but was full of derring-do. (Fun fact: she was so (in)famous there's a film about her and her partner in crime, Cattle Annie!)

And this hen really is too big for her britches—although she’s smaller than the other 4, she's definitely the alpha girl, feisty and bossy. She apparently thinks she’s in charge of both the feeder and waterer, and will often peck at the other hens and drive them off.

Anyway, back to the broody girls--you might wonder, why not just let them sit? The problem is, a broody hen doesn’t lay eggs, and is pretty much uninterested in eating or drinking. My concern is especially in summertime, a chicken could get so dehydrated she might die.

See those ruffled feathers? Like I said, cranky!

Anyway, the drill for us is to remove the hen from the nest—and boy, are broody hens cranky! They hiss and snarl at you when you bother them. Next, we put them in a separate fenced orchard with feed and water. Because if you simply return the hen to their regular pen, she’ll just run into the coop and climb right back on the nest.

Anyway, when Little Britches went broody a few weeks ago, a process which turns hens kind of passive and lazy (except when they're sitting on the nest), I started to see the writing on the wall. Then this week brought not 1, but 2 hens going broody simultaneously.

So it definitely looks like a trend. And now I see my future: our 5 hens just may cycle through broodiness, one after the other, in more or less a continuing cycle.

And broody hens are a determined bunch. Yesterday evening, when I was busy watering and mulching beds, I noticed one of the separated hens had disappeared. I had the 2 broody girls in the orchard, then I looked over, and there was only one!

For a minute, I imagined the worst--a hawk swooped down and killed her! But I was outside the whole time; I would have seen if a raptor flew into the yard. And I would have definitely noticed if the other hens were freaking out at the attack. (Wouldn’t I?)

In any event, I quickly got my catastrophizing under control and checked the nest boxes. And what do you know: the hen had somehow found a gap in the fence and snuck back to the coop and onto a nest. So I had to pull her out and put her into the orchard again. I know it’s kind of funny, but I’m just not thrilled about extra chores this time of year, when the garden is so demanding.

And speaking of determined birds…

The local songbirds get very brash during berry season. Despite our best efforts to protect the berries with stretchy nylon netting from stem to stern, wild birds somehow get inside the nets almost every day and have to be chased out. Towhees are frequent trespassers. They’re what I think of as the “Little Britches” of our local songbirds, since they get into the most mischief, and are relentless crop thieves.

But the other night, a towhee wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, and got caught in the net.

John, our go-to guy for wildlife rescuing, was in town doing errands. And we’ve found too many dead birds in our nets—when we weren’t around to free them, they likely died from fright and exhaustion—to want to risk any more. So it was up to me.

I approached the bird, enmeshed in the netting upside down and cheeping for all it was worth—I imagine it was terrified. I tried to gently loosen the netting around it, but the bird seemed to only get more agitated, flailing and flapping away. And for a few minutes, I thought he was getting even more tangled in.

But finally Mr. Towhee shimmied free and instantly flew away—without so much as a thank you… And somehow, despite his close call, I’m pretty sure I’ll be chasing him or his relatives out of the patch for the next two months!