Chicken pecking eggs?

[nuttyredhead]

I went in to collect eggs today and one of my girls was in the nest pecking at the eggs. Yesterday there was an egg with a hole at the top, and last week i had to fight a chicken (i think it was the same one) for the yolk. One was broken and she was going after it.

Is this normal or is this a sign of an issue???

 

[Yazzo]

It's not normal, but it is quite common. Sounds like you have an egg eater hen. This can sometimes be triggered by feeding your hens raw eggs (NEVER let them eat raw eggs), or soft shells that simply break under her. Sometimes it just happens by accident once, but it sounds like she's purposefully cracking the eggs open. She'll probably get worse, and continue to eat eggs to her hearts content.....there are several different solutions to this: one is just to pick up the eggs right after they're layed, but that's not always easy. What I did with my egg eater hen, was to pen her up for a few weeks, making sure to pick up her eggs before she could eat them. Once I let her out, she seemed to have forgotten how to crack an egg open, and never did again.

I'm sure others will have different techniques, but that's one, and it works (at least with the egg eater hens I had).