Historically, egg eating has been seen as a fault of crowding. Nests in particular are the worst offenders.
The popular orange crate-type nest, near a window or bright light, is the wrong idea. It is what most people use, of course.
But it was actually borrowed from early attempts to streamline poultry production. The method was essentially "cherry picked," without all the supporting details that went with it.
This is common with much of our modern hobby practices.
With this sort of nest, hens will very often be found crowding into a favorite nest.
3 or 4 will squeeze in and the clumsy footed dopes break eggs by stomping on them.
The bright light then illuminates the broken egg and voila! The Joys Within are revealed.
Eggs too long in the nest also contribute, simply by being in there when the elbowing begins.
Or, in the bright open fronted nest, one hen may take to pecking at a bit of feather, poo or small insect on the shell and again - voila!
It only takes one, too. As soon as the others catch on, you have an epidemic.
You can try all the "normal" solutions that have become part of chicken lore, like mustard, pepper, false eggs and so on. In fact try them first.
But the odds of success are not in your favor.
Now, there is always someone to say how well they work. But the conditions and details behind the supposed success are not known to us.
Often, the supporters themselves have not closely analyzed what was behind the success. Odds are, that something unseen was responsible for the method working, and they never noticed.
Meanwhile, there is an army of people and much historical data admitting that such methods are haphazard at best.
But do try them all first. They are easier than the alternatives, and you might hit on the right combination without even knowing it.
As for those alternatives, most of the early experts combated egg eating with...
- Communal nests, of appropriate size,
- Removing eggs from the nest immediately,
- Rollaway nests
- Keeping a clean hen yard,
- Keeping darkened nests in sufficient numbers, in a separate area,
- Culling the persistent egg eating hen.
There are several problems with these tried and true methods, however.
First, they need to be implemented at the outset. Most people are surprised by egg eating when it appears; they are unaware of the root cause.
Naturally, they tend to rely on the easy or lurid solutions when the habit first appears. That is our nature.
Secondly, retrofitting these methods tends to be laborious, and/or may also require expenditures in time and money. Proper outfitting of fixtures and appliances for poultry, if well planned, does not have to be expensive. But it can be a pain if they have to be added or modified to an existing hen yard.
Finally, they have at their core the idea that you are a part of the hens life and are there to stop problems as soon as they appear.
This means taking at least active steps... and may mean more distasteful decisions, like culling when all else fails.
Fortunately most of us here at BYC are hobbyists; we do not depend on the birds for our livelihoods. It has not always been so.
The early poultry researchers had more at stake and fewer resources available to them. As you might expect, they took a rather severe view of egg eating hens than we. To us, they are curious nuisance - to them it could mean a failed or diminished flock. They eventually learned that when the egg eating hen has the time to develop the bad habit, well... it is time to act.
