I’ve posted before about the advantages
of a broody hen, but
after raising two sets of incubator/brooder babies and one more broody
hen batch this spring, I’m even more sold.  Here’s why:

• Predator protection. 
  We lost a ghastly 24% of our first brooder batch to rats and 22% of our
  second batch to something (probably the same.)  On the other hand,
  our mother hen only lost 1 chick out of 10 — her success rate is so
  much better than mine that I’m embarrassed.
• Foraging prowess. 
  Not only does the mother hen take the chicks out to forage nearly as
  soon as they hatch, she also trains them very well about what’s worth
  eating.  Our first brooder batch is the same breed as nearly all
  of the mother hen’s flock (Black Australorps), and I considered them
  very keen foragers.  However, it took a lot of trial and error for
  the motherless chicks to figure out what to eat, and even though I
  tossed Japanese beetles in front of their noses multiple times, the
  chicks didn’t get with the program until they were nearly three months
  old.  In stark contrast, I threw in beetles gleaned from the
  garden when the mother hen’s chicks were a month old, and she taught
  them to peck up the nutritious treats in minutes.
• Easier rotation. 
  Having unmothered chicks in the same pasture with adults is tough after
  the former reach a month old since they will get chased away from the
  food.  Our mother hen made sure no one else came anywhere near her
  chicks’ food, so I was able to keep her in the same pasture with the
  main flock.  That meant more frequent pasture rotations and less
  bare ground.
• Less work.  All of
  the factors above make sense, but I have to admit that the real reason
  I prefer a broody hen is because it takes so much less work on my
  part.  Rather than nursing incubators and brooders through power
  outages, worrying over hatching chicks, and checking on newborns
  multiple times a day, I can hand the entire job off to their mother.

The slight downside is the price
tag.  You have to feed a broody hen for about three or four months
while getting no eggs in return — an estimated feed cost of $10.50
per hatch compared to about $2 in electricity costs for an electric
incubator and our high
tech brooder. 
Meanwhile, broody varieties tend to be less efficient at their other
job of making eggs, so you’re spending more on every egg they produce
during the down season.  That said, once you add in the lower feed
cost for raising the better foraging chicks, along with the chicks
saved from predators,  you might break even.  That’s why our
flock next year will contain our proven White Cochin, three new Cuckoo
Marans pullets, and a couple of other potentially broody breeds.

My
ambitious plan for this year is to get our
broody hen to raise
three batches of chicks from our flock’s eggs, keeping several of the
pullets as layers and putting the rest in the freezer at broiler
age.  For her to get her work done and all of those chicks raised
up before cold weather hits again, I figure we need to get started in
February.



Harvey Ussery has an
excellent article about using
broody hens to raise your own chicks, and I plan to follow his
advice in as many ways as possible.  However, since I have a bit
of time before our hen has to become broody, I’m
starting with a slightly simpler method of inducing broodiness. 
First, I moved our nest box out of the entranceway to a more secluded
location at the back of the coop, then I added in eight golf balls to
simulate a nest full of eggs.  If our cochin starts to show an
interest in the  nest within the next week or two, I’ll move the
rest of the flock to their spring pasture (not built yet!) and let her
get to work.  On the other hand, if our broody hen is
recalcitrant, I’ll move her into isolation to jump-start those maternal
urges.  Wish us luck for a bountiful chick year!