Ugh…Broody is back in solitary confinement. This time, though, we put her in the outdoor chick brooder instead of the little one in the garage since she beat herself up last time.
Why is she in there again? Well, because she is officially on the cull list 🙁 We tried solitary the first time and it didn’t work. So, then we just kind of let her do her thing. She’d sit on eggs, we’d take them once a day at the end of the day (trying to encourage her to eat and actually roost for the night, which she did). Generally speaking, she’d eat a couple of times a day and drop a big one, then go straight back to the eggs. She was still not nice to the other hens, but she wasn’t being awful, so we kind of went passive and hoped her instincts would chill out a bit. They haven’t. She’s just gotten meaner.
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| If you look closely, you can see the drops of blood. She also has blood on her beak, which makes me feel like she took a chunk of her sisters toe with her mouth. Bitch. |
Today she attacked another hen who was trying to get into a nesting box to lay an egg. We were in the backyard, working on the coop and the garden, so we heard the commotion inside the nesting boxes and checked it out. That’s when we found blood. Lots of little drips of blood.
It took us a few minutes to figure out what happened, but I think we figured it out…A hen was trying to lay an egg and Broody got bitchy…they had some sort of fight and the hen lost a toe nail. Torn right off. Gross. Poor girl just wanted to lay an egg! So we got Broody out of the nesting box and let the hen do her thing.
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| Blood. |
I got on the computer to figure out what to do and how to help her once she finished laying. I read about stopping the bleeding and wrapping it up on a couple of different sites, grabbed towels and salt water and made a plan of how to help her once she was done laying.
But, once she was done she just ran out of the coop to go get some food. Her toe stopped bleeding on its own and she’s walking around just fine. Right now the plan is to keep an eye on her and see if she starts babying it or pecking at it.
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| Poor bloody toe… |
So, as if fighting with our other hens in the nesting boxes wasn’t enough, Broody then started attacking the other hens in the run, just because. Pecking and chasing and freaking everyone out. Not OK. The stress is not OK, the blood is not OK and her affect on the flock and their egg production is not OK (production has gone from about 30 eggs a week down to less than 20 a week despite the warm weather). It’s like she’s become toxic for the flock.
I know it sounds harsh, but we decided before we got our first batch of chickens that if they were not producing or if they were having a negative affect on the other chickens, we would cull them. While we love our chickens, we have enough pets, we don’t need chicken pets, too. Broody will make a better stew than a member of the flock at this point. Now we just need to find the time to cull her properly. In the meantime, she’ll be safe and taken care of (fresh air, plenty of room to move, food and water…), just separate from the other hens.
Anyhow, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas/tips on what to do about the wounded toe besides letting her take care of it? Should I worry about infection? Ugh…
No, no that’s smart. I agree with your culling her. I didn’t realize she was aggressive–I thought she was just broody. Agressive chickens are another ball of wax altogether, and you’re smart to do something about it. Aggression has no place in my coop, either. I’m a peacemaker. 🙂
About the toe: Go out and get yourself some Blukote. It should be at Tractor Supply or any feed store. It will stain your fingers and pretty much anything you get it on, so do it outside. Just dip a cottonball in it, make sure it’s nice and coated, and apply that to the toe. It is an infection preventer and works to “seal” the wound. Then keep an eye on your girl, but don’t worry too much. The Blukote is fantastic at keeping out dirt and infection. It’s my go-to for any animal wound. Plus, it’s a fabulous purple color! How can we go wrong with that??
Thanks for the Blukote tip, Jocelyn! i will definitely invest in some! Our wounded hen seems to be healing up quite nicely without intervention, which is simply amazing to me given the amount of blood we saw initially. Broody is doing fine in solitary, too. I still have a bit of hope that she’ll figure it out, but not too much hope. Silly chicken…all she had to do was be nice 🙁
I’ve had a couple of hens go broody twice within a season and OMG how annoying is it!!! We put one into a milk crate and hung the crate from the ceiling of the run to cool her off and isolate her and what a psycho she was. I was so close to culling her, hearing her angry crowing ALL DAY! But I persisted and she snapped out of it eventually. Took a good couple of weeks though.
Hens have a higher blood temp than we do and so they heal really well and quickly. Perhaps just check that it doesn’t get infected, but otherwise she should be fine!
Thanks for the body temp info! I didn’t even think about it in relation to their ability to heal! Wonderful! She appears to be doing just fine, so I am hopeful she’ll continue to heal herself nicely 🙂
Broody’s been fine in solitary this time but was trying to hatch a thermometer that fell onto the floor of her mini coop. Silly chicken. Not sure she’ll make it through this process, but I still have a little hope for her…if she can stop being awful , that is…
Aww, poor little thing to lose her toe! Broody will make an excellent soup or roast.
Not sure what to do about the bloody toe, other than to just watch it.
We’re dealing with a drake leg injury, and it’s taken him over a month to start walking on it again. Then, he got assaulted by a bunch of other drakes and gang raped, so his leg is right back where it was. Dom wanted to put him down, but I can’t do it. He’s too sweet as well as being one of our breeding drakes.
I hope you get good advice about the chicken’s toe.
Thanks Angela! Sometimes it’s just hard, isn’t it?! I hope your drake recovers fully and makes you lots of pretty babies 🙂
Oh, no, poor toenail-less chookie… and poor broody. I now she is being a bitch, but I feel sorry for her too, because she is just doing what nature intended. I totally understand why you need to dispatch her, though.
Our broody, Princess Layer, snapped out of it. By the time we finally got the chicken run ‘play pen’ set up (to make her be outside & shut off access to the nest), she’d stopped being in the nest all the time by her own choice. Ours chooks are young, and this was the first time any of them had gone broody, but her hormones, or perhaps her being on the ‘favourite’ nest all the time, put the other two off the lay too (maybe it was coincidence though, as the cooler weather started about then too?) But anyways, Princess Layer hasn’t been aggressive or upset at all. Maybe there have been a few little chest bumps or neck-feather-flare-up’s going on with her sisters, that’s all. We could easily get her out of the nest to have outside time & she happily stayed out there, not trying to get back to the next ASAP. Perhaps if she’d had actual eggs to sit on (all of them stopped laying, including her) maybe it would have gotten worse.
Hope all settles down after she’s gone, and hope the other chookie heals OK!
Oh, your Princess Layer sounds like a dream in comparison to the craziness Broody’s been showing us! Thanks for your thoughts and good wishes. Sometimes keeping chickens is juts not fun at all! But really, when I think of it, *most* of the time it is 🙂 Oh well!
I have zero chicken experience since this is our first time with ours too….but I know if I cut a dogs nail to low and it bleeds, I dip it in cornstarch to stop the bleeding. I am also guessing you will want to make sure the other chickens don’t start attacking the bleeding one. I read about how since they are carnivores, they will attack/peck [to death] anything with blood :/
Sorry for you guys and for broody all around, but you have to do what is best.
I was planning on the cornstarch but she stopped it herself before I could get that far 🙂 We’re keeping an eye on her and the other ladies now that Broody has been separated again. As a flock, they are generally very kind to each other and they are much calmer today than they’ve been in weeks. I feel bad for Broody, but there’s only so much damage we can allow her to inflict 🙁