looks like the story stopped just before answering the question in the title
We have about 100 birds and at any given time two or three will be broody. We collect the eggs everyday so sometimes the broody hen will just sit there on nothing or on one of our "fake" eggs (we put fake eggs in the places we want the hens to lay their eggs). We'll remove the broody hens from the coop several times a day until we break them of the habit. That usually works.
Occasionally we'll have snakes get into the coop and eat eggs. If the snake gets a porcelain fake egg that pretty much the end of that snake eventually. Rattlesnakes are more difficult, but we've gotten pretty good had removing those, too.
Our big problem this year is hawks (our chickens free range). We've lost about 20 birds this year just to hawks. Just this last weekend hawks killed three (flew away with two and mostly maimed a third I had to cull) and one hen got away missing her tail feathers and received some deep cuts our vet stitched up. She got away because our dominate rooster attacked and killed the hawk after her.
I hate to nitpick you here, but the person you're replying to is correct, and it's really not at the beginning of the article. Like you reiterate, the article states that the hen doesn't know — which is sensible (how would the hen know?), but doesn't answer our question: "What does a hen do with her unfertilized eggs?"
The article does answer the question for the case of a non-brooding hen: the hen doesn't brood, so not much of anything. But I think a lot of us were more interested in the case of a brooding hen, and the article then tells us about the process for a fertilized egg, which, while interesting, doesn't answer the question.
(I would guess that most of us that were raised in more urban areas believe that most or all hens brood. I did not know that some did and some didn't, for example.)
You, and other commenters in the thread, have thankfully given us closure w.r.t. the question by posting, though.
https://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Chicken-Coop-Door-Standard/...
It has a solar panel and rechargeable battery and you program in your lat/long and optional + or - times for the door to remain open or close around sunrise and sunset.
It works well. Of course, you could hack something up with a micro-controller to do the same thing rather easily.
We are fortunate that we don't have a snake problem. We do have red and golden hawks though and they fly around after our neighbors chickens. They haven't lost one to hawks yet though as they have a large guard dog which seems to be effective.
We recently just got a few puppies from a local animal shelter that we're acclimating to the chickens. We hope that'll cut down on predator loss.
What my parents did was gather the eggs for the day, wash them, then put them in empty 3 lb coffee cans, put a label on the cans with the date, then refrigerate them. My mom would then sell the eggs (80 cents a dozen) for spending money (she was a stay-at-home mom, dad worked for the county doing road maintenance/construction). She would also separate out the browns from the whites (I think she sold the browns at $1.20 per dozen). Occasionally we'd get a blue or green shell egg, but those weren't sold.
Any not sold after 30 days (IIRC) were thrown out (or maybe put into the slop for our occasional pig, or fed to the dogs - depending on if they were still "ok" enough for that of course). We'd eat some as well, but we had so many chickens that we couldn't eat anywhere near enough to keep the excess from forming, so selling them was the best thing to do with them.
Damn, I didn't know that could happen.
But really I posted this hoping some resident of hacker news who grew up on a poultry farm will come along and tell us what's what.
I have to go in and collect eggs, and pet on my birds to rouse them from their broody state, then force them out of the henhouse to go eat & drink. Otherwise she'll literally sit there on those eggs all day & night.
After a while, the hen might break the eggs and eat them. A way to train against this is to 1) never let it happen (remove eggs promptly) so they don't develop a taste for eggs or 2) give them golf balls to sit on.
Birds go through phases. Very broody for a few months, then disinterested, then back to broody, eating eggs for a while, ignoring them, etc.
Some hens learn to eat the uncollected eggs, what is also a problem because they don't know beforehand what eggs will hatch either, and start eating them at random.
If the eggs are left there, some animal will inevitably come and eat them. What is also a problem, because they will learn there are eggs there, and will not care to only look for abandoned ones.
Overall, it's not healthy to not collect the unfertilized eggs.