Incubation

One of the chooks has gone broody. On the weekend she was determinedly sitting on the eggs she and her fellow denizons of Chickendome had laid that morning, and stayed there rather than adventuring out in the garden with the others when I opened the door to the pen. A fairly pointless endeavour, given that we don’t have a rooster. I left her there for a bit, then went and lifted her out of the nesting box and removed the eggs. She stomped outside in a bit of a huff, then started scratching around and went and joined her fellows. Later in the day however she’d left them and returned inside to the nesting box, this time carefully incubating some straw.

I’m not sure how to cure her of this habit, apart from hauling her off the nest every so often and hoping that she realises that no matter how dedicated she is to sitting in one position, she’s not going to get chickens out of it.

It’s raining heavily and relentessly today and I always worry about the chooks in this sort of weather. Half their pen remains dry, but it’s not much space to scratch around in and I imagine them being rather bored during the day, staring dolefully at the pouring rain and watching the rest of their pen turn to mud.