Our broody hens successfully hatch and raise chicks for us. They possess such good mothering instincts that we decided to test their adoptive abilities. All of our bantams will adopt chicks if presented the opportunity while broody.
The best way to introduce them is at night and to slip the new chicks underneath the broody hen. Ideally, you place the chicks and broody in a quiet place away from the other hens who might disturb her.
However, we've successfully introduced them during the day, too. Additionally, we've also just put a nest box in the corner of our large coop and had no problems with the other chickens as a broody mama hen is a fierce foe. As bantams are smaller we don't usually give a single hen more than 6 full-sized chicks to raise and have done sets of two a couple times.
Either hatching or adopting chicks is the only way we've successfully broken our broody bantams.
