Hatching Eggs Under a Broody Hen

I’ve been wanting to try hatching chicks under a broody hen for awhile now, since last year when we moved out here from the suburbs and brought home our first rooster. At first, it didn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon since most of the ladies in our flock were made up of older hens and breeds that don’t tend to go broody, but as luck would have it, my dad and stepmom were looking to rehome a bantam hen named Dany who was constantly broody, so it ended up being a win-win situation for all of us.

Except Dany came home with us and never went broody.

Perhaps it was due to stress from a new environment, or maybe it was the wrong time of year, but we watched her closely after she had settled in with our flock and… nothing. So, eventually we gave up on the idea and ordered chicks from a hatchery (which involved a several months-long waitlist during the pandemic), and by October we found ourselves building a brooder to raise 25 incoming baby chicks.

Before we knew it, spring had rolled around, and our chicks had grown into pullets and then young laying hens, and Dany, who was living in a mobile chicken tractor at the time to recover from injuries due to bullying (she’s our smallest hen, after all), finally decided it was time to go broody again.

See what happens next in the vlog below: