Old-time breeds of chickens lay a clutch of eggs (twelve to eighteen eggs, usually no more than a hen can sit on and hatch); then they'll stop laying and start setting on the eggs. They get very grumpy. If you reach toward a hen as if to get her eggs out from under her, she's liable to peck you. (Chicken-pecks don't hurt much, and as a kid I'd stick my hand in the nest and let the hen peck away at me.) The maternal instinct starts the day she starts incubating those eggs. Hens like this are called "settin' hens", and it used to be common to hear the expression, "madder than an ole settin' hen".
While a hen is incubating her eggs, she'll only get off the nest once every two or three days to eat, drink, and poop. And let me tell you, it's a huge poop when she saves it up for so long. (My apologies to those of you who might be eating breakfast.)
Modern breeds seldom, if ever, go broody; it's been bred out of them so they'll produce more eggs.
When I was growing up, as I've written before, my mom kept chickens. Once in awhile a hen would "go broody", and Mother had a perfect solution: She'd put the hen under an upside-down bushel basket (the old-fashioned fruit-basket kind, so it was dark) for a couple of days with no food or water. When the hen was let out, she was over her maternal spell and would start laying eggs again in a few days.Guess what I found on Youtube? a video of a broody hen!
