Egg Breaking Suddenly Stops

[andylegate]

So for a couple of months I've been having issues with my hens breaking open and eating the eggs that are laid. I've got six Rhode Island Reds and six Cinnamon Queens.

I'd tried quite a few things: Filling the eggs with mustard, filling the eggs with dish soap, distraction toys like golf balls and making sure that they are getting enough protein in their diet along with crushed oyster shells. None of which was stopping the behavior.

They lay sporadically all day long, so I was having to constantly go out to check for eggs in order to save them from being broken open and eaten. I was starting to wonder if it might be just a couple of the hens and was thinking of a way to isolate them, when I realized something:

They sometimes lay eggs outside the chicken coop, and those eggs never get touched. They also only use the coop to lay eggs. When it rains, they go under the coop. At night, they all get up on the roost outside the coop in the run and sleep there. Even during the winter, they really didn't use the coop.

So I shooed them all out of the coop, closed and barred the door to it. For a week now, they've been laying all their eggs outside, and not one of them have been broken and eaten!

Of course it's a pain as they lay many of them under the coop and I have to crawl under to get the eggs. But it's worth it so I get my 8 to 10 eggs a day again!

So now I'm wondering if it was some sort of territorial thing?

 

[GitaBooks]

I had a chicken that I called Egg-eater who would break open and eat eggs only in the lower three nest boxes. When she broke them open the others would join her, but once we got rid of her they stopped eating eggs all together. When there weren't eggs in those lower nest boxes, she wouldn't eat from there.

I'm not sure if its territorial, but it could just be they learned that is where good eggs come from and think of those boxes as holding food, while other nests they think of as holding their eggs.

Best of luck!

 

[aart]

Hmmmmm that is interesting!

Do they sleep in the coop?

What kind of flooring/bedding is in the coop and in the nests?

 

[andylegate]

No, they insist on sleeping on a roost out in the run. Even during the winter.

I use pine chips/shavings as their bedding, which I change quite a bit since the floor of the coop is solid.