chicken eating eggs

[All-American-Chick]

i think one of our chickens are eating her eggs.
any advice to cure her or is it the end for her?
thank you
renee

 

[dreamgirl]

I haven't had this problem, knock wood, but have heard it is very hard to break. You could try providing her with more calcium and/or protien, perhaps her diet is lacking and she is trying to supplement. Getting to the eggs before her will obviously work, but is easier said than done. Hopefully someone else will have more experience.

 

[NeeleysAVLChicks]

Here's a couple things you can try...

1. Curtains covering the front of the nesting boxes, with a slit in the middle to allow the hen in and out. By "hiding" the nest, the idea is to keep other hens from knowing there's been an egg laid and cut down on curious onlookers.

2. Wooden/Stone fake eggs in the nesting boxes, peck, peck, peck, won't break, so hopefully discourage from pecking on the real eggs.

3. Blow out the contents of several eggs, fill with spicy mustard and seal with little pieces of tape. Put them in the nesting box, hens try to eat, encounter mustard, chickens HATE mustard.

Hopefully others will have more ideas and I would try increasing their protein/calcium intake as a previous poster suggested. Good luck! That's super frustrating.

 

[rebel yell]

if its one of your best hens, get her in a pen by her self, or she will have all the others doing it to & build a trap nest, as i call it, you know kinda sloped on the bottem &have the back it high enough where the egg will roll out as soon as she gets up off of it to a safe place so you can pick it up, dont put anything in the nest just a hard surface bottom this will alow the egg to roll out on the ground, youll have to set the eggs under something elese or a bator, but thats not hard to do, iv done this with one hen i had when i was in game fowl years ago worked great.

 

[BeccaB00]

I have had a big problem with that this year. And once they eat one..they eat another. then soon they eat every egg they lay. Somtimes they do this for calcium. So maybe try and provide more calcium.

 

[All-American-Chick]

thank you for the info.
ive put some golf balls in there.ill try the spicy mustard trick.
my son had actually had thought of something like this with tobasco sauce

she is confined with a friend and noticed she does have thin shells.she will drink our goats milk so i think ill add a bowl in her cage also.she has oyster shells now for roughly a week but havent noticed a big difference in her eggs.

renee