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There may be times when a broody hen is not in your best interest. Broodiness is infectious. Once one hen starts setting in earnest, it is highly likely that another hen will also start. And then another. Before long, there goes your egg production, most likely for several weeks. How do you break a broody hen?

I polled a large number of veteran chicken keepers as to what they believed were the best egg-laying chicken breeds. For a breed to even be considered, one stipulation was that the breed had to lay at least three or four eggs per week and had to keep laying fairly consistently for at least three or four years. Most breeds chosen were brown-egg-layers.