Return of our Brown Broody Hen

After getting a new chicken from Carol and Ed Gulley on Saturday and making the video this morning with the new hen in it, I looked out my studio window and saw the brown hen.   I went outside to make sure my eyes weren’t tricking me.  We haven’t seen her for days and was sure someone got her.  But there she was pecking around with the white and gray hen.

Then I got the idea that maybe she we broody.  So I searched the barn and the sun coming through a crack in the siding lit up a big nest of eggs.  When I touched them, they were all warm.

I took a few eggs and went back outside to feed them to the chickens when I saw the brown hen and the new hen each a foot off the ground flapping their wings and squawking at each other.   Establishing the pecking order.  The brown hen backed down.

A few minutes later when I didn’t see her around I went back to the nest in the barn.  The only reason I saw her was because I could no longer see the eggs in the nest, so I knew she must be sitting on them.  Hidden behind the hay bales, in a dark corner the brown hen’s body was barely visible she was laying so low.  Her tail stuck straight up against the back of the barn creating a right angle and  blending in with the wood.

A broody hen is one trying to hatch her eggs.  The brown hen’s been sitting on them for three or four days now.  She only comes out once a day to eat which explains why we haven’t seen her.  I’ve heard hens can be broody for  21 days, as long as it takes to hatch a chick, but sometimes,   they come out of it sooner.   We won’t have any chicks because we don’t have a rooster.  Good thing, we went from having two hens to four in one day.   We don’t need anymore.