Alright! Who did it?!

[loralei]

I have an egg eater with an appetite for blue-green eggs! Those are the only shell remnants I have found anyway. I have about 30 hens; only 3 are ee's so my blue-green eggs are precious! I've seen the posts on detering the deplorable behavior but other than catching the offender red handed how do I identify the culprit?

Thanks y'all!

 

[Countrywife]

check for egg breath maybe?

 

[savingdogs]

I don't know how you can tell who is egg eating, but I had this problem about a month ago. We did know which chicken it was, but it was such a nice one we hesitated to send her to "freezer camp."

We tried a suggestion someone made on here which was to put golf balls in the nests. I'm not sure why it works, but perhaps they are so hard when they peck at them it is uncomfortable, but it worked.

We also distracted them all by putting a "flock block" in the coop in view from the nests and also making sure the eggs were collected regularly and our curtain was in place.

We have not had any egg eating or pecking since then.

Hope that helps.

 

[Luke0987654321]

if you leave it too long the other hens will learn to eat eggs and then it will be a total disaster

 

[dappertophatter]

Blow out a blue or green egg, then fill it with something vile to a chicken- I can't think of ingredients right off the top of my head, but somebody on this site did it before, a search would probably turn it up.
If you're REALLY desperate, you could buy a webcam and set it up in the coop.
Check head and neck feathers for egg.
A temporary solution to get colored eggs is to collect often until you find the culprit.

 

[Alice EG]

Get a fake egg or an empty eggshell... fill it with dye and leave it in their coop. Come back in a little while to see who has dye on their beaks.

Actually, I've heard of filling the eggshells with mustard, since apparently chickens don't like the taste of it. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it worked for us. Especially since it resembles the color of the yoke, so they may end up associating the yoke with the taste of mustard and leave it.

 

[Atlchick]

We solved that problem here by filling the egg with liquid soap and sealing it up with wax. It worked for both an Easter Egger and a Cuckoo Marans.

 

[randomchick]

Quote:

nice

 

[loralei]

Great! I've got hubby checkin for egg breath at this moment! lol! It will give him something to do while he's off work this week!

Actually one of my ee's has been laying misshapen eggs. I posted regarding that a week or so ago and someone mentioned she may have an underlying health issue causing the irregular shapes. I've not gotten a misshapen egg since I found the blue-green remnants so I was wondering if maybe she senses something is wrong and is eating her own eggs. Does that sound plausible at all? Anyway, that's why it's important to me to find the egg eater so I can see if it's one of my ee's and issolate her for treatment.

Thanks for all the great info/suggestions!

 

[savingdogs]

If you have a way to isolate them, why don't you put your suspect in isolation? That way you will at least be able to tell if it is her or not.