Our four remaining hens (plus ‘Handsome’, the cockerel) appeared to have been reduced to three a fortnight ago when one simply vanished during the day without a trace. Last week Peter attacked the chicken pen, clearing mounds of nettles and comfrey around their shed. And there under the shed, was the missing hen, flattened out like a pancake, clearly as broody as only a broody can be.

I braved her indignant pecks and the nettles, shoved a hand under her and counted about 12 eggs. We concealed her as best we could with plywood sheeting and left her be. On Friday she emerged for a drink and a feed and I could clearly see 16 eggs. Tonight we lifted her off her improvised nest and moved her and 21 eggs into the more secure broody coop. Poor thing, she’s only a little bantam and can barely spread herself wide enough.

For those of you who’ve never kept hens, when one of them goes broody, the others appear to stop laying. But watch carefully and you’ll see them climb in the nest with the broody and lay their egg next to her. She will quickly tuck it under her and add it to the nest. The layer wriggles out of maternal duty and hopes hers hatches out.Clearly our other three hens have been wriggling under the shed to add their eggs to hers.

Of course this strategy fails after the first few days, as the later eggs are way behind the initial batch. When the first eggs hatch, she’ll go into mother hen mode and lose all interest in sitting. But now we’ve no idea which are which so we’ll leave her be and see what happens. She may lose them all if she can’t keep them all warm enough.

September 5, 2010