Easy Broody Breaking

If you raise chickens or plan to at any point in your life, it is likely that at some point a chicken will refuse to get off of her nest box. She will sit there for days, not lay a single egg, and fluff up (sometimes even peck!) at you when she thinks you are possibly in her space. This hen is broody. If you are looking to hatch eggs at that very second, this can be a great thing. A broody hen will take all of the stress out of hatching eggs for you and there are many benefits. If you do not want chicks currently or do not have any fertile eggs available, you will need to use a broody breaker.

This can be a pain in the butt. After multiple failed or long attempts, we have finally determined the cheapest, easiest way to break a broody that works great for us.

Here is Fluffy, the notoriously broody Silkie.

We put a large dog crate on top of 2 sawhorses. This makes her unable to make a nest anywhere and eventually they stop being broody- sometimes in just a day, sometimes in a few weeks. Before we had the electric fence we put the set up in the garage with newspaper/plastic under it for easy cleanup. It is important that you keep them off the ground or else they will make any solid floor space into a nest, regardless of if they have eggs to hatch or not. We put a tarp over her so that she doesn't get stressed or rained on. At night we close the tarp all the way.