Opal's gone broody.

Opal is my favorite chicken. She is the most docile, sweetest thing ever. She lets me pick her up with no protest, and talk to and cuddle her. Opal would be an awesome chicken mom, too, and she wants to be. She wants to be so badly that she has decided she is going to be a mom.  Opal can't be a mom. Oh, she CAN be a mom, meaning all her chicken parts are ok, but to be a chicken mom is sort of like being a human mom. There needs to be a chicken dad and we don't have one. Opal has decided to just park her fluffy butt in one of the nesting boxes, where the hens lay their eggs, and just sit there, as if she had a clutch of eggs under her. There are NO eggs under her, because a broody hen doesn't lay eggs. Not until the chicks have hatched out. They lay a cluster of eggs and then stop while they sit on them until the chicks hatch. Opal doesn't realize there are no eggs.  Her chicken brain told her it was time to sit on eggs, and sit she is:

She sits there day and night. Last night I waited until just a bit after dark and moved her over to the roost, hoping that with bad night vision she wouldn't hop down and resume sitting in the box. I thought this would break her of wanting to brood, but apparently it didn't. I lift her out of the box and take her out to the yard, so she can get a drink, eat and get some exercise. She terrorizes the other chickens when they get close and this just isn't my sweet Opal. She preens excessively, fluffs up, spreads her wings and puffs up like a turkey, and just generally becomes a little chicken witch. This has to stop. I've read that putting ice cubes under her might cool her off and become so uncomfortable that it isn't worth it, and also giving her a cool chicken bath, especially on 'THAT PART', would cool her off and get her out of the mood, but none of these ideas are sure-fire fixes for what's ailing her. I'm thinking the next step might be:

Not a rooster light, silly, a REAL rooster.  I have wrestled with rooster resistance (hahahaha), but my girls are all grown up and maybe it's time. Mother Nature and all that. If I get one we'll have a naming contest. The winner gets a dozen eggs.  I know roosters can be trouble;. maybe more trouble than a broody hen.

This is my dear Opal, just this morning, after I carried her to the yard. She's worried about her phantom "babies".

Poor Opal. She's just beside herself these days.

 Oh, dear. Decisions, decisions. Now excuse me while I go raid the ice cube stash.
Bok, bok, squawk blessings,
Brenda