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lazy afternoon, a photo by kusine on Flickr.

I love a lazy afternoon!

Noodle and Nugget

My hen won’t leave the nest box.  What’s up with that?

It’s possible she’s sick. but more likely, she’s broody.  That means she wants to hatch eggs into little babies!  And you know what?  You don’t want that to happen if you’re not actively raising chickens.  For one thing, your hen will stop laying, and you don’t get eggs.  For another thing, she won’t want to eat or drink much and while in the normal course of things, her eggs would hatch and she’d go back to normal, if you you let a broody hen sit, it’s quite possible she’ll die from dehydration (or starvation, but dehydration’s faster).

OK, she’s broody.  What do I do?

First, ignore her complaints and kick her out of the nest box. Clean out the nest box of any eggs, including any fake ones you put down to encourage your hens to lay there.  She’ll try to sneak back into the nest box while your back is turned, so kick her back out again. She will be grouchy and bitch at you a lot.

Since your other hens need to access the nest box, you’ll have to confine your broody hen.  The easiest way to do this is in what we call “chicken jail”. We first started out with an 18″ wire dog crate as our chicken jail, and if some lovely person hadn’t stolen it, we’d probably still be using it.  Now, we have a crate we built, with 1/2″ hardware cloth around the sides, an open bottom, and a solid top (because the other hens will want to sit on top of it).  Put a door on one of the sides, or I suppose you could hinge the solid top, too.  We put food and water in bowls attached to the sides of the box and put it in the chicken run.

First thing in the morning, the broody hen goes into chicken jail and the nest box is unblocked.  In the afternoon,  when everyone else has laid their eggs, collect the eggs, then securely block off the nest box.  Let the offending chicken out of jail.  DON’T FORGET to unblock the nest boxes the next morning.

Lather, rinse, repeat until you try leaving your broody hen out all day with the nest box unblocked. Depending on how fast you caught her broodiness, she may spend three to seven days in chicken jail.  If she lays any eggs in jail, she may be over it and you can try letting her out.  If she’s friendlier and less bitchy, you can try letting her out.  If it’s a weekend and you have time to keep an eye on her, you can try letting her out.

If she hunkers in the nest box again, back into jail she goes.  If she ignores it or just lays an egg an leaves, congratulations, you have your chicken back!

How can I transport my chickens?

For one chicken, I really like a carboard paper ream box.  it’s the perfect size and with some hole punched in the lid, perfectly safe for chickens.  It’s also nice and dark, so they’re happier.

For more than one chicken, I use a plastic storage tub with chickenwire bungied over the top. It’s not pretty, but it works!

How do I know if my chickens are sick?

Signs to look for:

• Fluffed-up feathers
• Change in appetite
• Change in drinking water
• Floppy comb
• Pale comb
• Unable to get onto roost
• Listlessness
• Excessive sleepiness
• Separation from the rest of the flock

How can I add a new chicken to my flock?

We’ve never tried to add a chicken to our flock, but we’ve had to reintroduce one after she had been separated from the other two for about 10 days.  Wow.  Chicken fight!  It was not pretty.  There was blood.

What we did was we put our “new” chicken in chicken jail (see above: OK, she’s broody.  What do I do?) during the day and brought her inside at night.  This keeps her safe during the day and at night.  We did this for a week or so, just so the chickens could get used to each other again.

Then we began “supervised visitation”: all the chickens were allowed in the run together for short periods of time, but I was between the “new” chicken and the others.  There were a few times when they slipped past me and there was nastiness, but not many.  I also gave them treats *only* when they were out together and behaving. This went on for two weeks until they were relatively friendly with each other.

Next, we did supervised visitation, but I stayed out of the run, though I was right outside the door, actively keeping an eye on them.  Again, they got tons of treats if they were behaving.  This went on for another two weeks.

“Wow, this is taking a long time!” you’re thinking.  Yes.  Yes it is.  By this time, our “new” chicken and one of the other chickens had come to an agreement, so sometimes it was the other remaining chicken who went into chicken jail during the day.  This seemed a bit like justice.

The final step was to let them all out together during the day on a weekend, letting them hang out.  They behaved, so the “new” chicken got to sleep in the coop that night.  Everything went fine and they’ve been OK ever since.  Actually, the two chickens who fought the most are the two we have left now, and they’re best friends.

Were we more cautious than we had to be?  Probably, but these chickens are my pets and I didn’t want them hurt.  I’d do the same thing with dogs if I were introducing two who didn’t get along very well at first.

Do I need a fancy-schmancy coop to have chickens?

Oh good lord no!  Given the chance to do it again, I’d change our coop quite a bit.  All you need is a well-insulated box that’s sized appropriately for your hens with:

• vents for proper airflow
• roosts for sleeping
• a nestbox
• clean water
• food

Granted, that’s a minimum.  But you don’t need external, hinged-top nest boxes, window boxes with flowers, cute paint colors, gravity feeders, etc.

If I were to design another coop (and we plan to build another one, it’s just not in the budget right now), I would:

• add another vent or window for a crossbreeze in the summer
• Not make said vent or window anything but a hole in the wall with a hinged, drop-down cover and hardware cloth to cover the opening
• have a door for cleaning that drops down rather than opens like regular doors
• not bother with nest boxes that can be accessed from outside (just put them next to that drop-down door)

Simple.