Egg White and Yolk Covered Eggs

[sergeantsheila]

Sometimes when we collect our eggs, they are coated with the egg white or yolk of another egg. At times there are pieces of egg shell in the nest box and other times there are not. Is this being caused by a predator or another chicken or something else?

 

[Golden Brahma 64]

One of the chickens could be eating their own eggs, there are many different reasons and causes for this such as lack of calcium or an incomplete diet

Egg eating can start by accident, sort of. Maybe a hen stepped on an egg and punctured the shell.


Chickens, quick to eat anything that looks like food, voraciously lap up the white and yolk of the broken egg. Once a hen has tasted fresh egg and found it to be “good food” she may start breaking eggs intentionally in order to eat them. Once she’s learned to do that, other hens will learn it from her, and soon you may be very short on eggs.

You can prevent this by making
sure that your chickens are getting an adequate and balanced diet, with plenty of protein and calcium. Calcium helps form strong egg shells, which will be less likely to break. Lack of protein in a hen’s diet can make her more inclined to break and eat eggs.

Its recommended that you keep a free choice feeder of ground oister shells available to your adult layers, and use a good quality layer feed with at least 16% protein. If your chickens have access to table scraps or scratch grains, that will lower the average protein content of their diet, so use these in moderation.

Second, provide Plenty of run space for your chickens, both in the coop and in the nest boxes. Overcrowding in the coop can cause your chickens more stress and can lead to multiple problems beyond just egg eating. Overcrowded nest boxes increase the likelihood that a hen will accidentally break an egg.

Start with one nest box for every four hens, and adjust from there. You’ll know they need more nest boxes if you often see more than one hen crowded into a nest box at the same time.

Place your nest boxes in a darker area of your coop, where the opening doesn’t face direct sunlight. Hens prefer to lay in darker, more secluded areas, so this will encourage them to lay in the nest box rather than somewhere else, and hens are less likely to break open eggs in a dimly lit nest box.

Provide plenty of fresh bedding to form a soft layer in the floor of your nest boxes. This will help protect the eggs from inadvertently being broken.

Third, if you or the chickens ever break an egg in the coop or in an area they can access, clean it up quickly and thoroughly, before they discover it. Remove any egg-soaked bedding. If the broken egg is on the ground, use water to wash away and dilute the egg white and yolk so it can soak into the soil. Remove broken egg shells or at least crush them into very small pieces so they no longer look like eggs. I hope this helps, egg eating is a bad habit and it’s hard to break them out of it.