Need help understanding brooding and details about incubating

Anyone? I also want to know more.

 

Placing eggs or leaving eggs will not necessarily get her broody. It is a hormonal change that triggers it. I have a BR that went broody at 6.5 months old. I got that breed because they seldom go broody and I did not expect her to do so so young. I expected my BO's to be broody first. You will know she has gone broody when she is staying on the nest overnight, and when you take her off the nest, she goes back(do this several times in a day to make sure she is committed to her broodiness). I waited for a week of this behavior with my broody before I placed eggs under her. She is due to hatch this weekend. Yay

 

Yep, what you're seeing is normal egg laying behavior. All my hens do this before laying an egg. It's likely to be a while before your hen goes broody. Although leaving eggs in the nest may encourage it, there's no way to make a hen broody, as it is a hormonal thing. What I'd recommend is that you take the eggs out of the nest (If you leave them, there's also a chance that they'll get stepped on, broken and eaten) replace them with either fake plastic eggs or golf balls. She won't know the difference, and if she DID decide to go broody, she'll set on the fake eggs. Then, you have time to be sure she's committed, and there's no lives on the line if she decides she's not actually up for it.

In the meantime you can be collecting the real eggs and reading up on incubation. If you get an incubator next week, by then you'll have an entire batch to shove in there. Store them in room temperature, pointy side down inside of an egg carton, turn three times a day (I put a brick underneath one side of the carton so that the entire thing is leaning. Just swap what side the brick is on a couple times a day) You can keep them like this for up to two weeks while waiting on your incubator.

Good luck

Edited: There IS a learning center here, it's very helpful for learning the basics! https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/1/Learning_Center

 

Hens typically do not sit on individual eggs. Their normal behavior is to lay several eggs over the course of a week or two until they have a clutch. Since the eggs remain "cold" the pre-embryos in these eggs do not begin to grow--they are in suspended development.

Once the hen has a clutch of eggs, she is more inclined to begin sitting on them. The hen's body heat raises the temperature of the egg so that the pre-embryos inside them begin to develop. At this point the hen is committed to staying on them until they hatch, leaving the nest only for a few minutes each day to eat, drink, whatever.

Now, this is, in brief, normal inbred behavior. However, since man has tinkered extensively with poultry genetics certain breeds and/or individuals follow this behavior to varying degrees, and many not at all. Thus the popularity of artificial incubation.

Hope that helps a bit