People are going to get to thinking that I have wooden eggs on the brain, but ......don't leave your real eggs in the nesting boxes. You are just inviting snakes and egg eating from your flock. Keep gulf balls or wooden eggs and that will get the girls laying where you want and if you get a broody......and you will diffinetely know when it happens, she will take the wooden eggs and sit hard on them. Then you can mark the eggs you want to give her. I will just assume you know to check her everyday for fresh eggs that need to be removed.
I don't expect my birds to go broody on me now, however. It wouldn't seem like a good time of year. Its too wet and it will be getting cold. If I would want chicks, I think I would want them ASAP.....like now and maybe only broilers that I could raise and kill.
I am hoping my girls start going broody in late Feb or March and throughout the summer.......and please not all at once, like they like to do sometimes. It looks like it is contagious. One starts and before you know it another and then most of them. By the time most of my birds are setting, I have no eggs to eat, because I am giving them all to the hens.