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Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If you are sure you want to break her broodiness, I think a wire-bottom dog crate or cage is better than a place she can have a nest. But there is a lot to be said for trying what you have available, and then deciding whether you need to do anything else!

That depends on whether you are getting the "beer" for the flavor or for the alcohol. If you want something that mostly tastes like beer, but has no alcohol, then the non-alcoholic stuff can have a place. Examples of who might want the flavor without the alcohol: anyone below the legal drinking...

That makes sense. Some people are determined that they have to clean the coop at certain intervals, and they can usually save both time and money with a few adjustments to how they do it (like using a poop board, so the shavings stay cleaner for longer). But it sounds like your situation is a...

Why do you need so many bags of shavings every week? Are you taking them out and replacing them, or putting a new layer on top of the previous ones?

Oh, good. I just wanted to be sure :) If you get an overwhelming urge to make chicken clothes, maybe crochet some chickens and then crochet sweaters for them. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/crocheters-thread.1605777/page-18#post-27566021 I'm not sure there. I've never tried it, and...

As a joke, yes. As a practical matter, probably not. Chicken feathers work best if they can ruffle up or lay down whenever the chicken wants them too. A sweater or a vest gets in the way of that. Clothing over feathers or fur does not work as well as clothing over bare skin like people have.

I just thought about my own interests, the interests of people I know, and the things that drive me crazy because I'm not interested but other people keep talking about them :lau And since I see that you are new: welcome to Backyard Chickens!

I just looked up Brahma history in wikipedia, and apparently they were named "Brahmapootra" at one time (for a river, presumably in turn named for the Hindu god), but later got shortened to plain "Brahma." So Brahma sort-of works out to being another of those breeds named for a place (but not...

Oh, that's much easier. Someone just needs to get them imported, which is probably still cheaper than feeding & housing birds for a big long breeding project. Maybe they could talk to Greenfire Farms, which has made quite a business of importing breeds from around the world and then selling...

The word Brahma does exist apart from being a chicken breed. Unfortunately, I can never remember what it means, just that it HAS a meaning of some sort, and the chicken was presumably named after it.

"Brahma" is the correct spelling for the breed you are thinking of. You had an extra "a" in the middle.

Lots of surprising things about chickens! Another one: the hen determines which chicks are male or female. The rooster does not. (Roosters have sex chromosomes ZZ, hens have ZW. That is apparently normal for birds, but of course it is backwards of what we are used to with mammals.)

Typically yes. The only physical issue would be if she got squished by the heavy rooster as he stood on top of her. He doesn't have a male organ that would need to go inside her, so no worries about that aspect of size (drakes and ganders do, roosters do not.)

Yes, I would expect that to work. Also if you think your hens are too fat, they will probably lose some of that while broody. It is possible for a hen to stay broody for too long and die of starvation, but most hens seem to stop before that happens.

I'm still practicing :)

Yes. Sometimes you get fertile eggs from that pairing, and sometimes not (apparently different sizes make things difficult, and some roosters are more creative than others at finding a way to make it work.)

Yes, they definitely do act differently. When the eggs hatch, the hen will want to keep all other chickens safely away from her babies. I've seen hens that insisted on 10 feet of space in all directions (this is a problem in small coops!) While she is broody, the hen mostly sits on the nest...

I'm pretty sure those birds pair up, on male with one female. With chickens, while the hen is broody, the rooster is still watching over his other hens. So he still has a "job" to do in the flock, even if he is not helping sit on any of the nests.

Sort of like that. The body of a broody hen is making different hormones than a non-broody hen, so it is not quite like just distracting her. But sort of like that.

Yes, you can give fertile eggs to the hen, and she will be happy to hatch them. Hens seem to have no sense of whether the eggs were laid by themself or not. The rooster does not help sit on the eggs. After the chicks hatch, he will probably treat them as members of the flock (warn about...