A few months ago, Eva finally convinced us to let her get chickens. Up until last week, the entire experience has been smooth sailing. Eva and Sophia feed the chickens, clean the coop, and our dog Annie actually gets along with them. The kids prefer to be outside with the chickens and Annie than inside on their devices, and we started getting fresh eggs last month. So the chickens have been fun and nutritious. But then last week, Eva came to us very concerned because one of her hens named Velvet did not want to leave the nesting box. When Eva tried to remove Velvet from the coop, the hen even hissed and pecked at her. How rude! Eva did some research and figured out that Velvet was brooding. She was sitting on the eggs for the purpose of hatching them. The problem is that we don’t have any roosters so these eggs are unfertilized and have no chance to hatch! Even worse, we discovered that brooding behavior is contagious because one of Eva’s other hens Phoenix also started to brood. Eva thought it would be fun to do a podcast episode about the brooding hens, and she shares two important life lessons we can learn from their behavior. Eva has done a number of episodes on life lessons we can learn from animals, but this is the first time she has done an episode on her own pets. This is one of our favorite episodes, and we hope you love it too! For our show notes, visit DreamBigPodcast.com/179