Dumb chicken question from someone who has raised them for 25 years:

[hedgehog]

How do you know when a hen wants to set a nest? If I find eggs under the straw - was a hen hiding them or was that accidental?

How do you keep other hens from adding eggs daily to the clutch the broody hen is trying to set?

How do you encourage hens to set?

[jwirr]

1. From my experience she will tell you! She will refuse to get off the nest and even fight you for it

by pecking you.

[FedUpWithIt All]

2. My hens always buried the eggs, particularly when the weather is chillier.

And when a hen goes broody they look spacey, make unusual sounds (almost like they are talking with the eggs) and are pretty insistent on staying put and will become very agitated if you try and move them.

As for the adding eggs to the nest issue, the hen will, more often than not, stay put on the eggs preventing other hens from adding. One potential problem can occur if you allow another clutch of eggs to accumulate the hen can become "confused" on her short breaks away from the nest and choose the wrong pile when resetting. It is best to remove other eggs regularly, or better separate your broody hens. The wisdom of separation becomes even more apparent as the chicks begin to arrive. Other hens can be quite nasty to chicks they are not nesting.

I found the best way to encourage them to set was to leave a small pile of eggs in the nest box. It can become confusing when there are new eggs being laid with the waiting eggs and can be hard to keep track of the fresher ones (some people mark the waiting eggs with a permanent marker so they know which to leave and which are fresh) . Some have also suggested using wooden eggs (they are the same ones used to influence an egg laying area and can be switched out if a hen goes broody over them) as a pile but my birds tended to separate out the wooden eggs when they went broody.

[bvar22]

3. She will let you know.

There will be no question about it.
She will remain on the eggs in an near trance when all the other hens
have left for their daily foraging.

Most modern breeds have had most of the Broodiness bred out of them.
It IS cool to have your flock self propagate,
but it comes with some negatives.
It can be contagious, seriously curtail egg production, and disrupt the harmony in the hen house.
For some reason, our hens prefer to lay their eggs in one particular nesting box, though many are available.
They will line up for that box, and bitch at each other to Hurry UP!
If you get a Broody Hen that wants to keep that box,
the other girls complain...loudly.

We got some Wellsummers a couple of years ago, and they will go broody and hatch their own chicks.
We built a smaller Isolation Coop alongside the regular coop so that we could remove broody hens,
and give them a safe place to hatch out their chicks.
We can't let the young chicks Free Range because they are Hawk Bait,
and they are just Better Off not having to mix with the Big Girls and compete for food until they get some size.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=268x4762

Out of the 6 eggs that hatched last year,
5 were Roosters ,
and you can't give away a rooster around here,
you can't keep that many roosters,
and you can't just Set them Free.