Another sign that Spring is progressing is that I get at least one hen that goes broody. She sits the nest and won’t give it up, hisses and yells when someone comes near, and she if there is an egg, she hunkers over it like a dragon on a hoard. I have no tolerance for the behavior and pick up the broody hen off the nest, place her feet in the cold foot bath and take the eggs. I even take the golf balls that help remind the other chickens where to lay. At night I take her out of the nest again and put her on the roost. The bummer part is that when a hen goes broody, she stops laying eggs. My methods have so far worked to break the broody streak, but even once the behavior has stopped, she won’t lay again for weeks.

The hens’ preferred nesting boxes are a little large, two hens shouldn’t be able to fit together, but I rarely get broken eggs, so I let it be. The two pictured above are probably the same two that have dust bath wars over the same square foot of dirt.