This is a question more out of idle curiosity than anything else, but does having a rooster around encourage broodiness in hens more than if he wasn't there? I know that with parrots, a lot of times petting them a certain way will trigger something in them that makes them start laying. When my parrot, after 16 years of no eggs, started laying, I was at a loss as to why until I noticed how my SO pets her, like he's stroking a cat. I taught him to just scratch her head, and I no longer have problems with her laying eggs. Clearly domestic chickens don't require anything to stimulate egg production, but I was wondering if the act of mating may trigger something in some chickens' minds to make them more likely to go broody?
