- Jun 27, 2008
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I'm new to chickens and have a 9 month old australorp who became broody two weeks ago and started doing a trance-like broody thing in one of our two nesting boxes. I only have 4 hens and no roosters but a friendly neighbor who works on a farm brought me 6 eggs last weekend (he says the farm has 40 hens and 4 roosters so there isn't really any way to be sure that the eggs he brought would result in chicks) and I marked them with Xs and stuck them under my broody hen. She has been a serious and devoted egg-setter and has literally not gotten off the nest at all for days at a time (I set little dishes of watered mash, yogurt and cracked corn to entice her to eat a bit). Twice in the past week I have found two of three of her marked eggs pushed out away from her nesting box and I wonder if she has done that purposely because she can tell something about the eggs. At the same time, she has rolled fake eggs, foam rubber balls and unfertilized eggs (laid by her sisters) into her nest - so that makes it seem that she can't tell what is really an egg worth setting on or not. Both times I've stuck the rolled-out eggs back close to her body so she can easily collect them back underneath her - but I feel unsure of whether she purposely pushed them out because they are rotting insde of something. What should I do? I do check under her (which I'm sure harasses her) every so often because either the other chickens sit on her and lay eggs into the same box, or she rolls them over to her her side from the other nesting box from time to time.