What to do with Broody

[chickenfan]

My first-time Broody Faverolles has chicks two and a half weeks old but she is so busy looking after them she has become incredibly thin. Now that the days are warm the last two days I've been separating her from the chicks during the daytime to try and encourage her to eat, and put her back with the chicks in the evening. She seemed to want to leave the coop, but stays near the chicks during the day. But she is still barely eating - apart from a little egg yolk. I'm not sure what to do - whether to move her right out of sight of the chicks, or how to get her appetite back. She has eaten a little egg yolk but isn't tempted by other nice food.

 

[rick]

Things I have used (though not with a broody) are:
If you grind up pellets in a pestial and mortar then you can make pellet flour and that can be added to anything they will eat, even as a dusting on egg or cucumber pieces.
If you put cucumber or apple etc in a liquidiser then that can be used as the water to make mash. Rice made into a 'milk' also seems like a favorite sauce on more staple fare.
Pasted fish, of course, usually makes anything irresistible. The trick is making the dish very difficult to pick apart so they have to eat the good stuff with the delicacy. Even if it's only a pinch of pellet flour that you can get away with then it's better than nothing when needs must.
That's what I've found anyway.

 

[valeriebutterley]

Eggs in any form, smashed in their shells, hard boiled, scrambled, always get wolfed down with my lot, also tinned tuna is always completely irresistible and extremely nutritious. Hope it works.

 

[Marigold]

Any of the above is even more attractive if fed mixed into a warm damp mash, rather than as dry food- plus mealworms and sunflower seeds - and in a mash you don't need to grind the pellets first. Chick crumb is much higher in protein than pellets, so as the chicks are two and a half weeks, she can still be sharing their food, rather than pellets. I expect she lost a lot of the weight whilst sitting, so as long as she's active and taking an interest, I wouldn't worry too much. She will feed when she's ready. It could be that the stress of separating her from the chicks is part of the problem, perhaps, as she's obviously such a good mum to them.

 

[chickenfan]

Many thanks all. I will try some mash and mealworms. She seems to have lost a lot of weight since the chicks were born and always an empty crop and she was getting restless with them. Perhaps she just wants more space than the broody coop.