do chickens MOVE eggs??

[YolandaT]

Hi! I have 4 chickens about 7mths old. My chickens don't use any of their roosts and they don't lay in their nest box so I know they're kind of weird.

Well the other day we saw an egg in the run. It was sort of hard to get to so we closed the chickens up in the coop and thought to get the egg later. My husband opened the coop in the AM and forgot to get the egg. When he remembered, in early afternoon, the egg had moved from the run into the middle of their coop!! Do chickens move eggs?!

The weird thing is, they have to jump down about 4 inches from the coop to the run - so to get it into the coop from the run means they would have had to lift the egg up into the opening. Is this possible? If a chicken didn't do it....what do you think did? We have checked and the coop nor the run have any spaces for anything to get in.

What is going on?! Egg production has been low and I attributed it to winter but now I'm wondering if there is something else afoot. What do you think?

 

[swimmer]

Maybe some kind of rodent? Mine have moved eggs out of the nest box to lay one of their own, but never up.

 

[gumbii]

that's a trip... i also think there's a predator a foot...



i know my silkie threw some eggs out of her lay box that got wet... i didn't think water would get in there... it only rains for a week here in los angeles, so i didn't think it was that much of a concern to waterproof their coops... LOL...

 

[SparksNV]

Maybe a predator got the first egg and the other egg in the coop is a new one?

 

[DPC poultry]

I have heard of hens eating eggs for protein maybe they moved it around trying to eat it? who knows?