One unhappy chicken

I now know that what I experienced when Little Bob went broody was a cakewalk. Two days of gently but firmly pushing her out of the nest box and making sure I collected eggs promptly broke her of her broodiness.

Not so for Coco. That chicken wants on the nest like a dog wants a meaty bone. And she hasn't even been sitting on any eggs (since the first day she went broody)! I pushed her off the nest several times Thursday and Friday, and while she never tried to peck me, she would, for lack of a better term, raise her hackles mightily. She always vacated the henhouse quickly, but as she went about her business in the coop run, she kept making all kinds of pathetic noises and puffing up her feathers so that her tail feathers were spread out, much like a turkey tail.

Thursday evening she dropped a shelless egg in the run, and laid a very softshelled egg in the non-favorite nest box Friday evening before moving over to the favorite box to spend the night. Worried I was stressing her out (stress can cause a hen to pass an egg through too fast, so the shell doesn't have a chance to form), I decided to let her sit on the nest all day Saturday. And she did. All day. Even though there were no eggs.

This morning I did a little research, and decided I needed to take a different approach, or she could be on that nest for a month, possibly getting sick in the process. Plus, it's not fair to the other ladies to have one of the two nest boxes out of commission. What I read seemed to indicate that her soft-shelled eggs were because she was seriously broody, and her egg-laying production was temporarily ceasing.

So I marched outside and booted her off the nest, then closed the door between the run and the henhouse. She was NOT HAPPY. She would eat and drink and scratch normally, but repeatedly hop up to try to get inside the henhouse. And the weird vocalizations and feather-puffing continued.

When Little Bob looked like she needed to get to a nest box, I opened the door to let her in, and Coco shoved right past. As soon as Bob laid her egg, I had to push Coco back out. Traumatic for both of us. I ended up segregating her with a ventilated cardboard box for the rest of the afternoon so I could leave the henhouse door open for Buttons and Marmalade. When 5 p.m. came and went, I the typical laying window was over, I shut the house up and freed Coco. She had a nice dust bath and weed-eating session with the rest of the flock, but continued to try to get into the henhouse frequently.

To keep her out of the nest boxes tonight, I put a cardboard box in each one that takes up most of the room. I have got to break her of this habit, but I fear it's not going to be easy!