Chickens are strange

Just for the record our chickens are family and of course free range. They are totally spoiled and have minds and personalities of their own. So when one decided it would start sleeping under the carport at night with the cats, we thought sure why not. She's not hurting anything and maybe there was a dust up in the coop. We did check and the coop seems okay, no strange dangers or unusual issues. We do have a few who like to play wild chicken by roosting in the Magnolia tree during good weather, at night but to each their own.

Then I came out one morning and I saw this...

The goof ball was in a bucket. I came home and there was an eggs. Okay that's fine. She was out scouting the front yard for bugs and aggravating the cats and coming back at night to roost. 

Then that's when the strange comes into play. She has decided to go broody.. on this!

This bucket that she had been laying in and that had been retrieving an egg a day is half full of pecans from last year. We had picked them up late and never did anything with them. So there they sat until she came along. Now she has decided that they must be small eggs and she is going to hatch them!

I thought she might be laying on some eggs.. nope.. just pecans. If you bother her she fluffs out and rearranges her "eggs". She does get off to eat and drink if it's brought near to her. 

I figured she's give up after a week, nope still there. So we were talking to some friends last night and they have ducks. Their ducks won't sit on the eggs and they suggested we give her a couple of eggs that could be viable to try and hatch since she's been trying so hard. So last night we took her out and placed the eggs. She was very excited and settled back in after our disruption. She poked and prodded and got comfortable again. We'll give her a few extra worms this week as a treat and see how it goes. I have already laid down the law and we won't be keeping the ducks, just fostering for now. The original owners would like to have them back. E is very upset that we would take them away from her after she hatched them, but I think she would be a bit confused about what to do with them, if they do hatch. I'll keep you updated on the chicken/duck progress.

Have you done any switcheroos on your chickens? How did it work? Share your stories I'd love to know what to expect!