I took the short video
above on Saturday afternoon, when we enjoyed a day of spring before
diving back into winter.

Usually, I let our
chicks out to nibble at the ground once they’re about two weeks old and
are well-bonded to their outdoor
brooder. 
Unfortunately, this year, the weather has been against me.  While
chicks are still covered in fluff, they’re easily chilled if they get
wet, so I can’t let them out into cold rains or snows, which is what
the weather’s been like for most of their second week of life.

So they’ve mostly been
stuck inside, except for this one foray into the wider world.  The
Pearl Leghorns led the charge once the door opened, but were also the
most confused by not being able to walk through the plexiglass to get
back home.  Hopefully, by this coming weekend, the worm of winter
will have turned and the Leghorns will be able to show their shyer
foster siblings how to hunt.

In early March, one of our Cuckoo Marans kept ending up in the garden
in the morning.  At first, I just focused on the scratching damage
and didn’t think through how she was getting there, but then I realized
she was walking through the barn during her morning
constitutional.  A little later, I discovered that the garden was
just a waypoint and that her main goal was to lay an egg in a busted
straw bale inside the barn itself.



This seemed like broody
behavior to me, so even though I blocked off the exit to the garden, I
kept letting the hen tromp through the barn.  In fact, I even put
a waterer and a dish of food beside
the nest to make things easier.



Now and then, I’d catch
the hen sitting on the eggs, but she didn’t seem willing to fully
commit — I was just as likely to see her out with the main flock in
the woods.  I let the eggs build up until there were about twenty
there, at which point Mark brought some in for our breakfast. 
Then Lucy broke into the barn and ate the rest — bad dog!



I’m not sure whether, if
we’d provided a better spot, our hen might have fully made the switch
into broodiness, or if she was just enjoying laying her daily egg
somewhere quiet and warm.  We’re still batting 0 with this broody
hen project, so I’d love to hear about the accommodations you make for
broody hens if you’ve had more success.