egg eater!

Ok thanks

We has a hen turn into an egg eater when she became a bad flock queen. Just generally a witch to all other chickens, and she wouldn't let the other hens roost up, lay, or sit and she would break THEIR eggs and eat them. Just generally a nasty bit of work. She gets the best and most of the food, and we give a couple cups of softened cat food every few weeks just to stay on top of it. If you have already tried upping protein, and you notice that your breaker/eater is a boss lady, the problem might be she's just decided she is the only one allowed to use the nest and all others are invaders that must be stopped.

If you're hearing a lot of chaos during laying times, you may have nest arguments going on. Incidental breaking happens, the boss gets the reward for breaking, and continues the behavior.

What stopped her was when the second brood hens got big enough to take over the flock order and they took her down a few notches in the pecking order, so she didn't get to bogart the nest and have time to decide whose eggs were hers to eat. When they started laying they started running her off the nest (they all want the same ONE SPOT, all 12 of them... nowhere else will do, it's like this territory smack down game) so they could lay and when she didn't get to sit on everyones eggs indefinitely, she didn't get around to eating and breaking them.

Once she was dethroned, the egg eating stopped. We went from getting almost NO eggs, to having a dozen a day in like a week.

We were on the verge of culling, but didn't have to. The chickens got tired of her antics before we had to intervene. In retrospect, I think isolating her for a week would have probably done the same thing in the end.

Our ex-eater is a barred rock. The australorps outgrew her and docile as they are decided they were no longer afraid of her and if she wanted to make something of it, they were willing to go there, much to her chagrin.