egg pecker

Hi there! Every now and then I find a pecked egg. It seems to be when I haven't been out to the coop to check for eggs often enough. If I get out there 3 times a day, I hardly ever find a damaged egg. I don't know if that is practical for your schedule- but it seems if the eggs sit in the nest too long someone gets curious...I haven't had an egg eater yet. If I find a pecked egg- the dog gets a treat! Good luck!

 

Try a fake egg (wooden, marble, or a rock) in her favorite nest. It may teach/train her that pecking an "egg" isn't the thing to do. Good luck.

 

My hens get curious sometimes, too. Those cracked ones go in a Pyrex custard bowl or my tiny cast iron skillet- into the oven at 300 degrees- followed by the fridge- then onto my DH's sausage biscuit the next morning. Then I remind myself to check more often! If it's there long enough, they will peck at it.

 

When a hen truly becomes an egg eater or pecker it can be very difficult to break them. You have several options:

1) Collect the eggs as often as possible.
2) Figure out which hen it is and rehome her.
3) Try different ways to stop her. The best one that I've found is to blow out an egg and put really hot sauce (spicy) in it with a syringe... put that egg back into the nest and hope she goes for it. That will often stop a hen from messing with eggs again but not always.

The spicy hot sauce one actually worked for me with my one egg eater. She pecked open one egg with that stuff in it and has never done it again.

 

I had a hen that was doing this during the summer time, I put some fake golf balls in the nesting box and it worked AWESOME !! No more pecked eggs.... Give it a try !! Good luck.