A Neat Way to Make a Broody Hen Useful

 
 ^ (Here's a hint.)^

 (Even though it's winter, put yourself in the following position for just a minute.)
            It's a cool spring morning. Drops of dew still cling to the grass beneath your feet. You stroll out to the chicken coop and run your hands over each nest for that smooth warm lump. So far, the girls have been getting back into the swing of spring and laying an egg a day.... but then you reach the last nest. There she is, with that permanent scowl, in the same spot she's been in since last month: the one broody hen. Barely laying more than a few eggs in almost 30 days, she's proven herself pretty darn useless.
       This is a problem we've likely all had to deal with. It seems as though every year there is at least on hen with the dreams of hatching out her own eggs, and each hen always manages to maintain that same poker face! I swear, no human being has ever or will ever given me a dirty look as evil as the glower I receive each year from the broody hen.
        But if you're a big ole' softy like myself, you still probably don't have the heart to cull them just because they aren't being productive.
         So what do you do when life gives you lemons?! You give it fertilized eggs of a different bird so it can hatch em' out!!      Well....you know what I mean.
         Last summer, I stuck a fertilized peking duck egg underneath my broody buff orpington. She hatched it out and was happily a cluckin' and a frettin' over the little ball of fuzz underneath her, loving it as if it were her own. That little duckling was healthier and happier than any incubator hatched chick I've ever seen and the mother was pretty happy too.

 (Diane again with her little one Stan)


        To do this, any kind of fertilized bird egg will work. It's great because (A.) you don't have to worry about using a fire hazard heat lamp and (B.) you don't get stuck with more chicks than you want by buying them through the mail. Being a foster mom is also a perfect job for a broody hen that's too old to be useful for egg laying anyways. An old retired hen will readily hatch out any fertilized egg you give her and will likely be an even more attentive mother.