Breaking a Broody Hen, Literally

Just kidding.

On the chicken theme, one of the girls has now decided to go broody.  Dottie, the white one, had climbed into the nest box and was refusing to leave.  I mean, REALLY refusing.  Open the door, and she lets this nasty creaky… uh, hiss?  Not sure what you call that noise, but it isn’t pretty.

Didn’t have the motivation to get pictures and record the whole thing, but I decided that was not an acceptable state of affairs and so pulled out the egg she was on.

Not a half-hour later, I went to check on her, and there was another two eggs under her.  I have no idea how that happened.  Anyway, she was still sitting there all bulgey-eyed making her crazy-chicken noise.

OK, stage two.  Replace the new eggs with ice cubes and let her sit on those for a bit.  That seemed like it’d be discouraging.

Nope.  She just sat on them until they melted.

Fine.  Stage three.  Pry her out of the box with a stick (she kept pecking me when I tried to push her out with my hand) and clean out the box so it’s obvious there are no eggs there, and it’s just a box.

That’s when the interesting abnormal group chicken psychology kicked in.  The other girls basically got in a line and kicked her ass.  She came out like she was offended at everyone, and they pecked her in the side of the head so hard I could hear the contact of beak on head.  Even Shirley tried to take a swipe at her.

In the interest of increasing her chances of survival, I decided to turn the lights out (I’ve been burning a 40W bulb in their house).  They all jumped up on their perch, gave her a smack, and seem to have gone to sleep.

I find it interesting that other people can become emotionally attached to these moronic creatures.  I mean, it’s fine and all, but I don’t get it.  They’re just neurotic, misshapen, feathered lizards.  Clearly, they have about six switches in those “brains” of theirs– eat, crap, run away, have eggs, hunker down, scratch.  I would say that doesn’t leave much room for things like affection and personality.

Don’t get me wrong, I like their eggs, and chicken stew is delicious.  I’m happy to provide them with a healthy environment in which they can live their robotic little lives.  But pets?  No more than my coffee machine is one.  Actually, quite a bit less now that I think about their emotional importance to me.