Broody Chicken

It is amazing how many new things you can learn from raising chickens. We have had our chickens for about a year now, and just when we think we have it down, they throw something new at us. The past two weeks we have been dealing with a broody chicken. And what, you ask, is a broody chicken? It is a hen who is trying to hatch an egg - even though it's not fertilized. Yep, no rooster in our hen house, yet this chick won't leave the nesting box.
Not only will she not leave the nesting box, she happened to pick the favored nesting box in the coop. We went from four eggs a day to one at most, because the other hens won't use the other nesting box to lay eggs.

At this point we have tried removing her from the box every time we enter the coop. For those of you who don't know, hens who are broody can be nasty and will peck at you if you try and remove them from the nesting box and then attempt to stare you down and ruffle their feathers at you as you remove the eggs that are in the box (yes some of the other hens will squeeze in there and lay eggs on top of her). Andy actually attempted a staring contest with her to try and intimidate her out off the box ( I am very sorry I missed this one). Tomorrow we are going to try closing off that particular box, as suggested by one of my coworkers who owns chickens, in hopes that she will forget why she wanted to be in there and go about her merry hen ways. If that does not work there are several other "interesting" suggestions found online that we may resort to.