Egg-eating

[Taco]

Put a sign up in the coop that say "CONTAMINATED EGGS" and teach your chickens to read.

 

[animal paradise]

Put a sign up in the coop that say "CONTAMINATED EGGS" and teach your chickens to read.

Hahahaha. That would be good!!!!!!!! I don't know how easy that would be.

 

[FaerieChicken]

What could I put into the eggs in place of dishsoap? Is there another concauction?

 

[itspebbl]

Maybe vinegar or lemon juice. Most humans don't like those things so I don't see why chickens would absaloutly love those things

 

[under the radar]

We had our first broken egg with another pullet grabbing the pieces of broken shell and running with it. I cleaned everything out of the nest box, put fresh litter in there, grabbed the broken shell bits and hung a suet feeder out there with celery tops to distract them. The feeder is full and I cleaned out the waterer and put a lacrosse ball(first thing I found, I was running around to find a fix quickly)and a plastic easter eggs in each box. I check the boxes at least 3 times a day. We have 3 pullets and one(the shell grabber) laid her first egg last week. The other two produce an egg each day.

 

[DeltaBluezTess]

I put fake eggs in and eggs were still being eaten....so I took a fake egg and a real egg in my hand, walked into the run, rolled the fake egg on the ground...all the hens went for it and pecked it, waited until they were done, saw one hen was more persistent.....then rolled the real egg and all of the other hens could care less since they just chased the fake egg but the one hen went after it, worked on it until it broke then started to eat it....put her in a stall and did the exercise again in the main run...the hens all went after the fake eggs, quickly lost interest, tolled the real egg, then looked it over and ignore it....got rid of the hen and no more egg eating from hens again (knock on wood)....I had to let them try to eat the fake egg first and with the second real egg, I knew the egg eater would be persistent.

I have also waited until the eggs were laid, then let the egg eater break the egg, then rush in and see who had the wet beak....sometime the other hens would join in but the egg eater would have yolks all the way up to her head.....

so now, I have the nest boxes loaded with fake eggs and if I do get eggs eaten, it is due to weak, thin shells....I add more supplement/shells and the problem fixes it self.

Sometimes I can break the hen but if they still continue, then it is bye-bye for them. I had advertised them on craigslist for $5 each, as egg eaters, hence the reason so cheap, and a lady snapped all of them up. There were four sisters (hatchery RIR) who ate eggs from day one and would not stop. She bought them knowing they were eggs eaters and I told her I tried all ways to get them to stop....ran into her a couple years later and asked how she did (as she was going to break the egg eating habit)....she told me that she cured them of egg eaters...I asked how...she said the coyotes cured them....she never was able to stop them either.

If I catch it early enough I can break them, but they make it a habit, sometimes they will have to go bye-bye. Mine have free choice of food, shells, grass, corn, bread, etc so it's not a matter of lacking something.

Knock on wood, now I have a nice flock that lays eggs and eats bugs, not eggs.

 

[Joshua G]

Maybe vinegar or lemon juice. Most humans don't like those things so I don't see why chickens would absaloutly love those things

Chickens are supposed to like vinegar, according to "Storeys Guide to Raising Chickens".

 

[LoveChickens123]

do you have any fake eggs put them in there eventually they will get tired
or you can mustard in there to make them stop. just put it in the fake egg

 

[under the radar]

Great advice, thank you! We put golf balls and empty plastic Easter eggs out there and haven't had another incident. It probably helps that I started checking the box every hour or two after the broken egg. So far, we have collected 6 more eggs and no more broken ones. So it may have been a fluke but yay! The fakes are staying there, just in case. I'm checking the boxes every 3-4 hours now.

 

[LoveChickens123]

that is good that they stopped