Chickens-- a broody bath?

Now I've heard everything..... at least about chickens. My friend V tells me that in order to get a hen out of her broody stage, you have to give her a cold bath. She said that students who raise chickens and then show them in the FFA (Future Farmers of America) competitions (beauty pageants for chickens?) will bathe them, blow-dry their feathers, and then attach bows to the female's feathers. What?!!

The hens that are in a broody stage have elevated body temperatures (needed for hatching eggs) and a cold bath will lower their temperature to a more normal level, shocking their system back into a non-hatching mode.

I can just see me explaining this one to my husband..... who thinks I'm crazy as it is because I talk to the chickens when I'm outside, and I talk to the cats, and I always talked to Gracie. I even talk to the birds outside in their nests, telling the mama birds that the babies are safe, that I'm not going to bother them and I'm doing my best to keep the cats away from the baby birds when they get out of the nest. As a result of all of that talking, the chickens know the sound of my voice and will come running from wherever they are as soon as I call out to them, the cats seem to know what I'm telling them (even though they don't always choose to listen), and Gracie always did whatever we told her to do, whether they were spoken words or hand signals (she was such a smart dog). As for the barn swallows outside-- they all just look at me with their heads tilted to the side as I pass by their nests.

But... giving the chickens a bath? And then blow-drying them and putting little bows in their feathers? Pink? Yellow? Polka-dot? Do I coordinate the bows to their feathers? Or to the colors of the coop? Should the bows match the seasons? Patriotic colors for July? Red and green in December?

Out in the back yard under the mesquite tree, there is a vintage claw-foot bathtub.... original to the house, we think. The previous owners must have put it out there when they installed a new tub in the main upstairs bathroom. The vintage tub is very small, and sort of cute... they filled it up with topsoil and planted flowers in it. We had a nice surprise of yellow mums in there this past Spring, and my husband planted some red ground-cover type of flower around the edges. That old tub looked beautiful, all in bloom under the mesquite tree. With the tub's proximity to the coop, it would be the perfect place for bathing the hens. Of course, we'd have to remove the flowers, take out the dirt, wash it out and plug up the drain..... then we can fill it with water and get the hens into it for their baths.

Not, not, NOT going to happen.

The chickens, by the way, were having a hissy-fit (hen-fit?) yesterday. There is one nesting box in the coop, which has four separate nests-- two on top, two on the bottom.... a mini hen-condo. Usually, Scarlett is in the upper left nesting box when she lays her eggs (which she's been doing every day now, being that her broody-stage is over). Yesterday, Scarlett chose the upper right nesting box for her egg.

Well, that was just fine for a while, till Prissy walked into the coop to lay her egg, and saw that Scarlett was in her favorite nesting box. Did Prissy just fly up into the box and take another one of the three empty nests? Of course not. She paced back and forth around the coop, yelling and squawking and carrying on as if someone was pulling out her feathers. She yelled so loudly that I went out there to see what was going on.... as soon as I saw Scarlett in the "wrong" nesting box, I knew what the problem was.

Prissy looked at me, then looked up at Scarlett. Then she started pacing again, while Scarlett just sat there on the nest and followed Prissy with her eyes as that displaced hen went back and forth, back and forth. "Just pick another box, Prissy... there are three more up there!" Squawk!!!!!! Cluck!!! Screech!!! Cluck!!!!!!

I was not going to stand in that coop and try and convince Prissy to use another box, nor was I going to lift Scarlett out of Prissy's spot and put her on another nest. "Both of you just work it out!" And back I came to the house. A few more squawks and clucks from Prissy (so loud that I heard it all inside the house) and then Prissy flew up into one of the other nesting boxes. (I heard that from the kitchen door-- Prissy was so mad that she was using her feet to re-arrange the hay in the unfamiliar box.... scratching at that hay till it sounded like she was going to dig right through the metal bottom of the box.

In both of my books on raising chickens, there isn't a chapter that tells you that the hens will sometimes behave like four-year-olds. Nor does it give instructions on bathing them, drying their feathers, and the placement and color-coordination of hair-bows.