What my broody hen has taught me about female hormones
and why love for our adrenals is a life-long commitment
Betty - our biggest girl of all went broody this week. She began displaying the unmistakable behaviour of wanting to mother her young. She refused to budge out of her nest box, fluffing up her bum feathers and purring her warning chirp every time we went near her.
As I focus on the female nervous system and adrenal health in this week’s publication, I also want to share that I have just dropped my Adrenal Abundance resource from £55 to £35 just for a short time. It is a complete Naturopathic guide aimed at nourishing women of all ages and you can find it here:
We made the decision to break her broodiness rather than let her stay on her eggs as we don’t feel quite ready for breeding chicks, but that’s not to say we won’t consider it in the future.
However this week the weather has been very hot and Betty was being super stubborn and not eating nor drinking so it could have been quite a tricky situation if we’d left her to brood in the hen house. So into her own isolation unit she went until her broody urges had passed.
It has been absolutely fascinating for me to observe her during this time though and I am reminded at the massive power in female hormones. Ok, Betty is a chicken and I am a human, but the one thing we do have in common is a deep mothering instinct driven by hormones. For Betty it was all too consuming. As soon as those hormones kicked in nothing else mattered. There were chemical signals all over her little fluffy body screaming at her that she HAD to remain sitting over fertilised eggs, keeping them warm. Even to the point of plucking out her own chest feathers to create extra protection for her precious eggs, refusing to leave her nest even for water and food. She literally shut off all her own needs in order to create and sustain life for her young.
Female humans of course can rationalise and recognise the need for self-nourishment, unlike a hen, but the power of our hormones is as un-ignorable.