Encouraging Another Broody Hen

Now that we have had our first successful hatch with a first time broody hen, we got to wondering, can we repeat the process?

From reading a number of both online and offline articles on broody hens we learned hens go broody most often in the spring and fall of the year.  At late September, and the weather still quite warm, perhaps we could encourage the process.

Instead of collecting all the eggs except for a few of the ceramic nest eggs we leave scattered in different boxes, we decided to place 11 eggs in one of the favorite nests. I got a pencil and wrote the date on each egg, so if no takers the first day, I could then freshen up the eggs and remove the day old eggs from the nest, perhaps keeping the Ameracuana and Welsummer eggs for an extra day or so.

Perhaps leaving the eggs overnight instead of collecting them will trigger one of the hens to want to set on them for a few weeks.