Blue Jay Eating Eggs!

[Sylver Queen]

I would be worried that the jay would bring her/his fledglings to the coop and you'd have a gang to worry about.

How about a cover over the run?

How about hanging strips of cloth or plastic over the door? The chickens would learn to walk through it, but the flying jays are unlikely to figure that out.

How about getting an electric light that looks like an eye. It blinks on and off. Supposed to look like predator eye. Put it just above the door.

The only opening is an automatic door, chicken-sized where they walk up a ramp and enter. There's a red light flashing constantly throughout day and night on the door. I even put a fake owl up on the gate. I've even stood there watching it enter my chicken house, asking it what it's doing. It lands on the ground 10 ft from me and looks at me. The jays do what they want. I have now lost 14 eggs in 5 days. The ONLY answer in my instance seems to be to remove the offenders before they teach my hens to eat their own eggs! My nesting boxes are integrated into the building so I'm not sure I could add a rollaway feature easily, but it also sounds like hens don't like them!

Last year I tried closing their automatic door and opening the side gate so they all have to go around the back way, but all my babies are in there now so I can't do that for at least a few weeks. Pretty sure I lost eggs even then though. They're impressive.

 

[Mad at Jay]

X2 on that.

How can you trap the jay? He’s ruining my eggs too!

 

[Sylver Queen]

How can you trap the jay? He’s ruining my eggs too!

So I can chime in just to say that I happened to be out with my baby chicks when a jay went straight into the chicken house. I protected the babies and hurried over and closed the door. Jay was trapped in the house. Right place right time when I was keeping an eye on everything on a day off. I've only lost one egg since because that one was the main culprit.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Free range protection just isn't going to work with a protected species that you can't kill or trap. And losing eggs is a minor nuisance, consider the mites or the disease being brought in by these birds as they travel between other coops and your coop.

Bio security has to be a concern even for a backyard flock. Not doing so leads to authorities going around killing backyard flocks. Even with bio security the corporate farmers have lobbyists and you don't. Best not to give them an excuse to limit their competition.

First defense is to stop feeding the wild birds including them eating your chicken feed. Hanging strips or CDs or things of that sort aren't going to work, you gotta fence them out and your birds in or live with the costs of free ranging chickens.

Wish I had a solution for you.