Unbelievably excited to find my very, very, first ever eggs at the crack of dawn before a weekend away!!!! But sadly, one was cracked and one of my chickens pecked the remaining one right in front of me. Still, I was elated. My neighbours looked after the chooks over the weekend and got two more broken eggs.... I got home this afternoon and checked the coop, there was one perfect, unbroken egg in there... and I'm onto them now, going to be checking for eggs as often as I can so hopefully I can grab them before they get broken and pecked. I'll be devastated if this continues. I've read about mustard in eggs and fake eggs or golf balls helping to fix this problem but I'd love to hear good news stories about how you over came this problem with a happy ending.
If they don't stop you might have to make a roll a way egg box there is a lot of threads on here about them.
Have you looked at the Learning Center? There are a ton of good articles there. Here is the one on egg eating: https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/six-tips-on-breaking-your-egg-eater We have too many hens and I have a hard time figuring out who the egg eaters are when it happens--and I've tried putting eggshells filled with dye in the boxes, etc. If I can figure it out, I cull the hen. Since I usually can't, however, we keep a couple of golf balls in each nest and that seems to help a little bit.
Congrats! Chickens will naturally peck at something to find out what it is. Just because they ate one egg, doesn't mean they will continue and be egg eaters. My flock will eat an egg broken in the nest, and I have not had a problem with them egg eating.
The first two eggs from my RIR were broken and sitting outside the coop (and nesting boxes). She was also seriously freaking out every time she was about to lay an egg. I think she just didn't know about the nesting boxes and wanted out to find a good nesting place. I put fake eggs in the coop which showed her where to lay. I haven't had a broken egg since.
