My dog is an egg eater, how do I make him stop?

[ccrow]

Simple on paper, maybe not so simple in practice; but just don't let him have the opportunity

He's a pup and has just learned about these super yummy things- OF COURSE he's going to try to get more! If your birds are ranging, maybe keep them penned till mid/late morning so they will lay in the nest box? That's worked well for me, at least until my mini Aussie discovered that she fits through the pop door

So you see, I feel your pain, lol! I personally wouldn't go to the e-collar unless and until more traditional training didn't do the trick, seeing that it's a young pup; it may not be necessary to go that route and anyway, unless you are very careful how you use the collar, it's possible to create more problems than you're solving with it. Maybe it would work to fill a blown eggshell with something gross for the pup to find? Mustard, a bit of hot sauce, vinegar...

 

[TalkALittle]

Simple on paper, maybe not so simple in practice; but just don't let him have the opportunity He's a pup and has just learned about these super yummy things- OF COURSE he's going to try to get more! If your birds are ranging, maybe keep them penned till mid/late morning so they will lay in the nest box? That's worked well for me, at least until my mini Aussie discovered that she fits through the pop door So you see, I feel your pain, lol! I personally wouldn't go to the e-collar unless and until more traditional training didn't do the trick, seeing that it's a young pup; it may not be necessary to go that route and anyway, unless you are very careful how you use the collar, it's possible to create more problems than you're solving with it. Maybe it would work to fill a blown eggshell with something gross for the pup to find? Mustard, a bit of hot sauce, vinegar...

I agree that at this age, management of pup is the best course of action.

I'd be very willing to discuss the risk of fallout from using an e-collar in this and other circumstances as well as some simple measures one can take to prevent it.

The problem with using an egg filled with something nasty is that it is very easy for a dog to smell the difference between an egg that's filled with hot sauce and an egg that's not. I've worked scent detection with dogs. Their noses are very discerning.

 

[donrae]

I'm not against an e-collar in principle, but I disagree that the dog will only leave the eggs alone when the human is present. I may simply be fortunate with my dogs, but I can leave a plate of food on the sofa with the dogs in the living room and go outside, be out for 20 minutes or so, come back in and my plate is untouched. We leave food out on the counter all night sometimes, the dogs don't get it. YMMV.

 

[ameliadanielle]

We have an egg eating dog. She guards the flock sometimes we shrug and let her have them, especially when we get overrun. If we really need to collect the eggs, we put her on a chain before dawn or just let her in the house if she wants to come in, once the hens have finished laying and we collect, she is released. I'm working on trying to get my hens to lay in raised nest boxes so the dog can't reach them, problem solved. However... my hens love to lay eggs in the doghouse instead. Ugh.

 

[ameliadanielle]

We also shrug and let her eat the stragglers eggs that get laid later on in the day.

 

[ameliadanielle]

If you can't tell we have too many eggs for us to possibly ever be able to eat. We also supply eggs to 8 different households. Our dog still gets away with snacking on some.