Broken eggs twice this week...coincidence?

gale65

Songster
9 Years
Aug 19, 2010
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north central indiana
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My Coop
Our girls are about 10 mos old. They've been laying steadily since sometime in October and until this week we've never had a single broken egg. On Sunday we had a broken egg in the 'favorite' nest box. There were several other eggs in there too, so we figured it was an accident from eggs knocking together. Today (tuesday) there was another broken egg. It was in a different nest box and there was only one other egg in there with it, and it wasn't near the broken egg. So it wasn't from eggs clacking together. I can't say for sure but to me, it didn't look like enough liquid to equal a whole egg, which leads me to believe it was eaten after it was broken. I have not noticed shells being any thinner than normal. They get layer feed and sometimes I put some oyster shell out. Do you think the 2nd one was an accident? Or could we have an egg-breaker on our hands? DH wants to take the easy way out, of course, and just add more oyster shell, hoping that even stronger shells will work. I'd like to start working on roll-out inserts for our existing nest boxes. But that's a lot of work right now right during spring field work time. But I don't want to have to keep dealing with changing out bedding because of broken eggs.
 
You may have an egg breaker. We had been getting a lot of broken eggs, and despite giving much oyster shell and even crushed eggshell, the broken eggs continued.

Here's an article I found the other day, which is quite informative:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/six-tips-on-breaking-your-egg-eater

It said at the top that egg eating can start with an accidentally broken egg, which might've been what happened originally.

Good luck! And I hope you can find some time to work on your nest boxes too, they sound like a good addition.
 

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