Will broody give up brooding?

[jak2002003]

I have 2 hens that are brooding eggs. Sadly, for some reason, none of the eggs have hatched. Its been over 2 weeks now past hatch date and the hens are still brooding.

Will they give up on their own, or should I just take away their eggs?

I really wanted some chicks and I have some extra fertile eggs - could I put them under the hens or will the extra 21 days be too much for them?

 

[gritsar]

Hard call. I've had hens that were semi-easy to break of brooding and others that wouldn't give up, no matter what.
If you want to try again, I would definitely make sure that the hens had food and water close by, so they don't have to leave the nest to get to it and force them off the nest once a day to stretch their legs and get a little exercise. Personally I would only make a second attempt with hens that were in top form to start with.

 

[wowmanacat]

I had two hen go broody over a couple of month, since at that time I did not want anymore chicks(getting late in the year) I would just keep taking all the eggs out of the nest and over time they just stopped. I was not hurting for eggs at the time for I was getting up to 12 a day and that is way more than I needed. i had tried different way to break them and none of them worked for me so I just let them go till they stopped.