I raise Great Pyreneese. have a couple of litters a year, best kid or animal dog there is.
but chickens, I have 2 about 1 year old.all of a sudden 1 quit laying eggs, and now just sets on the others egg.anyway to stop this?
I also got 12 more Red, from Tractor supply, 4 died, but others are doing good.
Your 1 year old hens are likely molting (or else the one who has "stopped laying" actually is hiding a nest and will also be trying to set as soon as she gets a clutch.
To "break up" a broody hen, you have to get her thinking about other things. For some, simply removing them from the nest every time you see them will work. Others are much harder to discourage. One trick that almost always works is to put them in a cage or dog crate, and set it on a 2-3" pole, so it isn't quite stable. This literally keeps her off balance. Generally 24-48 hours in the rocking cage works.
I've got a Cuckoo Maran/True Blue cross who has been broody for at least 3 weeks. I keep thinking she'll give up, but so far, she's determined. I may try moving her to a dog crate and see if she'll persist. But I've already got 25 chicks I hatched in the incubator, 25 Slow Whites (which will also be egg layers... all of those are straight run, so I'm going to have lots of cockerels for dog food. Although I'm planning on giving a trio of Slow Whites to my son, and also our newlywed Amish hired man... seed stock to keep them fed in case things get worse.
Speaking of... I'm trying to get my customers to tell me how many birds they want, so I can order my 2nd batch of Cornish for pasture now. We've got about 120 CornishX 1 week old chicks in the barn (lost almost 18 in the first 36 hours... very unusual for us with Welp's birds. Last year, I ordered 115, they shipped 118, and we butchered 118... didn't lose a single bird!)
Anyway, I got an e-mail from McMurray hatchery, apologizing for being out of CornishX chicks, and saying they "have every incubator going full blast with CornishX eggs". So far, Welp doesn't seem to be running too short, although both my orders this year so far (the Slow Whites and the CornishX) were shipped 1 week later than they said.
Summerthyme