Broody Mama

In a previous post, I told you about one of my young hens coming into the house to lay eggs. Turns out, she was looking for more than that. She was looking for a place to raise a family. If you aren't familiar with broody hens, I'll explain. The hen goes looking for a nice cozy place to lay some eggs. She'll lay an egg each day until she's accumulated what she thinks is an appropriate number of eggs. Then she sets. She will not leave the nest willingly for food, water, anything. Even when you take the eggs away, she continues to set. There are other changes also. She starts acting weird, fluffing herself up like a turkey and making strange noises.
This would all be great if we had a rooster, which we don't. So, this is pointless. Not to her, though. She'll sit here on her empty nest for much longer than the 21 days it would take for eggs to hatch. Meanwhile, she won't lay any more eggs as long as she sits here so we're missing out on her prime egg laying time. My solution is to give her some fertile eggs to hatch and be done with this broody business much quicker. I had some eggs shipped in the mail and snuck them into her nest while she was on a forced food and water break in the henhouse.She came back to her nest and was obviously happy with the surprise. She cooed and clucked to the eggs as she tucked them all in. We are all anxiously waiting for October 7th. If she hatches all thirteen eggs, that will bring our chicken count to 73! Obviously we will be selling (and butchering) some chickens soon.