Broody Butterscotch

That wasn’t quite the end of Butterscotch’s first broody day. We went up to check on the girls after our evening meal as we always do. I looked in the shed and thought “uh oh, where is Butterscotch?”. She was missing.

I checked the nest box and sure enough she was back in there. I lifted her out and put her just inside the pop hole. She just sat on the floor of the shed for a few minutes then she suddenly came back out shouting her head off.

She rushed over to the pellets and proceeded to alternately shout and eat. It went BOC BOC peck, BOC BOC peck, BOC BOC peck. She had a good feed and some more water.

Meanwhile we decided to put the nest box in the shed as a temporary measure. We thought that perhaps if she got used to it being in there we wouldn’t have to disturb her at bedtime.

The nest box is now inside the shed

Butterscotch makes her way back in

Butterscotch jumped on to the nest box

I should have known that simply putting the nest box in a different place probably wasn’t going to work. She never attempted to look inside it but simply used it as a stepping stone to the ladder.

On the top rung of the ladder and still shouting

She continued to shout for a bit then settled down on the top of the ladder.

This morning she was once again out in the run until I had given out the corn. Then she promptly went back into the nest box again.

We have decided to postpone our day out today. Richard suggested that a bank holiday weekend will be busy and we may be better going for a day out another time, plus he has a D.I.Y. project on the go, maintaining the bedroom doors and windows. But mainly we can keep an eye on Butterscotch and we are going to install some nest boxes inside the chicken shed.

This may help Butterscotch for now and will ease things along in the spring when the egg laying starts again.