Gold and Storm have gone broody together

I have felt that Gold was ready to go broody for about a week. As she heads towards going broody she gradually spends longer and longer in the nest box but keeps laying yet another egg. Then she spends most of the day in the nest box without laying and I know she is broody.

Storm is quite different and just suddenly goes broody. She does the typical tail up stance and growl and just stops laying straight away.

Gold has laid twenty two eggs in five weeks since her last broody spell. Storm has laid sixteen eggs in four weeks since her last broody spell. This leaves us with only Dot laying. Luckily both these girls are easy to break out of it. I simply close the nest boxes when Dot has laid and leave them closed at bedtime so that Gold and Storm will perch in the chicken shed.

As Gold had only laid her last egg yesterday I opened a nest box for her today just in case she had one more egg to lay. Gold went straight in closely followed by Storm. Dot usually lays in the chicken shed but because these two girls were in the nest box together she wanted to join them.

At this point I had to go out for a couple of hours. When I got back Gold and Storm were sitting on Dot’s egg. Now I knew that Gold wasn’t going to lay another egg so I lifted both girls out and closed the nest boxes.

It usually only takes about three days for Gold and Storm to give up being broody as they are not very committed and it helps that they perch at bedtime. It then usually takes about two weeks for them to start laying again. So for now it’s all up to Dot to keep us going.