Do Pinless Peepers work for egg eating?

[feathersforus]

Trying to find a solution to break the habit of egg eating. Has anyone had success with this?

 

[azygous]

Once an egg eater, a chicken adopts the habit and good luck changing it short of chicken and dumplings. An egg eater is a hen that sees an egg and pecks it open with the intent to eat it. A hen that accidentally breaks an egg, then eats the leaked contents is not necessarily an egg eater.

A roll-away nest box is the only good solution other than the low-tech method of gathering eggs soon after they are laid. The more eggs accumulate in a nest, the higher the risk that hens settling in on top of them will break a few. Once an egg breaks, all chickens will be happy to deal with the mess by consuming it. Sounds flippant, but this is instinct, not bad behavior.

Even a hen wearing peepers is not immune to noticing a tasty mess under her beak.

This is my favorite roll-out nest box design since it's so straight forward and can easily be added to an existing nest box to convert it into a roll-out box. Anyone can build one, even me.

 

[feathersforus]

Made rollaway boxes. They will not lay in them! Keep laying outside of them and then eating the eggs.

*I just ordered ceramic eggs.
*Will try to make the nesting boxes more "inviting"

Getting worried though that we won't be able to solve this.

 

[azygous]

Your hens have adopted a bad habit you need to break by forcing them to use the nest boxes. You do that by restricting them to the coop for the next few days, giving them no opportunity to lay willy-nilly wherever they feel like it. Once they are forced to lay in the boxes, they will get into that habit. Chickens are easily trained if you follow through with it. I see very little chance of failure.

 

[aart]

They are currently being fed Purima Premium Layer Feed.

Might try upping their protein...especially animal protein.

More of the story for others reading:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/egg-eating-wont-use-roll-away-boxes.1308028/

 

[Marty chicken girl]

Your hens have adopted a bad habit you need to break by forcing them to use the nest boxes. You do that by restricting them to the coop for the next few days, giving them no opportunity to lay willy-nilly wherever they feel like it. Once they are forced to lay in the boxes, they will get into that habit. Chickens are easily trained if you follow through with it. I see very little chance of failure.

I have been following this thread because I have the same problem as feathersforus. I like your solution of locking them in the coop to force them to use the rollaway nesting box, BUT! One of mine that used to lay in the box now lays in the space NEXT to the box. She is in the coop, but not in the box. And the egg eater follows her around until she has laid her egg, so she can gobble it up!