CHAPTER III. 
THE SITTING HEN, 
T he cause of a hen’s desiring to sit, or, to use the technical phrase, 
‘‘becoming broody,” is involved in the same mystery as other similar 
operations of Nature. The desire for incubation, from whatever cause pro- 
ceeding, is frequently a great annoyance to the poultry keeper, who is often far 
more desirous of eggs than of chickens. Consequently many plans have been 
suggested to check this inclination. Some of them are cruel and absurd in the 
extreme — such as plunging the hen into a bucket of cold water, and keeping her 
there till half drowned ; but the cruelty that can tolerate such practices is generally 
disappointed of its object ; for the immersion of her warm body in the cold bath 
usually leaves the seeds of disease, which, in due time, bear their certain fruit, and 
justly punish the unfeeling owner. 
If, from any cause, it is desired to prevent a hen sitting, the most effectual 
means we have yet discovered is to allow her to sit steadily on some nest eggs for a 
week. At the expiration of that time, she may be cooped for a few days ; and if, 
on being liberated, she finds the nest that she was accustomed to destroyed, and 
the eggs removed, she seldom takes to another. But we do not believe that this 
provision of nature can be constantly set aside without injury to the bird. Her 
due hatch of eggs having been completed, a period of rest to the whole system, and 
its productive powers in particular, is now required. This we disregard when we 
refuse to allow the hen to sit ; and as she will again commence laying long before 
the period she would have done had she been allowed to hatch and rear her 
chickens, she is unduly stimulated, and a drain is caused on her constitution, which 
evidently must affect her at last. Occasionally, when we either want her eggs, 
or it happens at an improper time of the year, such as at the end of autumn 
or winter, we should not, of course, allow her to gratify her inclination ; but 
with such fowls as manifest this desire, we should consider that one brood of 
chickens at least in each year is desirable to keep them in health and vigour. 
We have, indeed, often seen Cochin hens in apparent health, to whom this 
license has been again and again refused, and the immediate ill effect obviated 
by a judicious system of feeding. Yet we must still think that our birds would 
remain longer in a productive state, and be in better health, if they were per- 
mitted to enjoy an occasional relaxation from the egg-producing process. 
If the hen about to be entrusted with eggs be of our own flock, she has 
porbably made her own selection of a nest; and where this is not incon- 
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