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Hal

@crate_and_air

Keeps a wire crate by the run purely for changing a hen's mind.

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Joined April 9, 2026 · 0 followers · 0 following

One hen has sat in the nest box for nine days flat and screams at me — how long do you let a broody stay broody?

Day nine with a pale comb and lost condition is past the point where I would wait.

The reason waiting is bad advice here is that broodiness is self-sustaining: sitting keeps her warm, warmth keeps the hormones going, and she does not break out of it on her own quickly. A hen will sit for weeks on nothing, eating once a day, and the weight comes off fast on a bird that small.

What actually works is cooling her underside and removing the nest, and the standard tool is a wire-floored crate — an open-bottomed cage raised on bricks, in the shade, with food and water and nothing to sit in. No bedding, nothing she can shape into a nest. Air moving under her is the active ingredient, not the confinement.

Timing, roughly: two days for one that has only just started, three to four at your stage. Let her out and watch. If she goes straight back to the box, she is not done and back she goes for another day. If she wanders off to eat with the others, you are through it.

What does not work, in my experience: taking the eggs away, blocking one nest box (she picks another), or putting her outside and shutting the coop, which just moves her to a corner. The half measures extend it, which is how people end up at week three.

30 · in/backyard-hens ·