Broody hen ate her egg

[1goose2ducks]

hi my broody hen has been on her eggs for about a week and today I caught her eating one of her eggs. She was sitting on two duck eggs and three chicken eggs. She ate one of the chicken eggs. It had a small embryo in it. Why did she do it she was such a good mom.

 

[Chick-N-Fun]

What a coincidence.......I just got back in from checking my broody’s clutch for any additional eggs, and one of her marked ones was gone. I checked everywhere! I even checked all of my cartons of fresh eggs to see if I accidentally collected it. Hmmmmmm.... hope you don’t mind if I piggy back your question..... there was a small chip on the egg surface that I covered with liquid bandage to protect it. My broody has been sitting for 18 days with all eggs accounted for until this afternoon..........not a trace of the egg and the coop s predator proof........hmmmmmmm?!

 

[1goose2ducks]

That is funny. Not the egg disappearing but the fact that it happened to u and me. Thank you for responding.

 

[Jbently28]

Are you sure it was a viable egg. They will naturally cull out the bad eggs to keep them from going bad and exploding and contaminating the rest of the clutch. It's nothing to worry about as it is a natural occurance. If she's still doing it with the viable eggs then I would pull them from her and place them with another broody if possible as she may not be a very good broody. They can also do this if it is their first time.

 

[MyChickenShack]

My 6 baby chicks are a week old tomorrow hatched by 2 sitting hens. After about day 14, I had gone out to coop and found a missing egg and a bits of shells in her clutch. I suspected she had eaten it, perhaps to dispose of a bad egg. As time went on, I ended up finding a dead chick in her clutch and it did not look developed. I don't think it hatched at all but rather that she had pecked at the egg until she got it out. I think she knew it wasn't any alive and was disposing of it. Then, after 3 chicks hatched ( because the other 3 belonged to my other sitting hen), within a few days you could tell she was ready to leave nest to teach the little ones. She still have 5 eggs left unhatched, and she pecked at 2 of them, leaving the membrane intact, but I could tell that the chick inside was not alive. She ended up abandoning the nest all together to tend to her 3 little ones. I am only a year into chickens, and this was my first time with broody hens, so my experience is minimal. But based on that and consulting my friend/co-worker/mentor and learning from her, I believe mama hen knew which eggs were bad and taking care of it.

 

[1goose2ducks]

Thank you the chick might have died in the egg and she got rid of it. She hasn’t eaten any more.