Found a secret nest

[jc12551]

I found a secret nest in my shed on Wed. It had about 6 eggs in it. I went away for the holidays and now there are 15 eggs in it. The eggs are coming from three-four different hens. One hen sits on it at night, but abandons it all day. I removed the brown eggs and left the six blue eggs (so I can tell when a brown egg is new). Should I toss the brown eggs? Eat them? I candled them (very porous) and floated them (sank with a little bobbing). I hate to waste them if they are usable. What do y'all think?

 

[chics n more]

I have this problem with only one hen-our EE Ellie flies the coop to lay her eggs in a doghouse-stays with them all night but abandons them all day-10 eggs in their now-I was hoping she would sit but no luck so far.
My DH says she is too good to lay her blue eggs with the brown eggs the little hussy!

 

[nurse_turtle]

I would eat the sinkers and cook and feed the floaters back to the chickens. I found a secret nest in our shed yesterday. It had 1 light pink/beige egg in it. I floated it, it sank, I put it in the fridge.

 

[Lollipop]

They should be fine, but you`ll know when you crack them. Use a cup. Better mark the eggs left in the nest as more blue ones are likely to show. If you write the date in pencil, when she gets serious you can elect to let her have all of them, or eliminate the older ones. Don`t get greedy. If she can`t cover them easily, she will have a poor hatch. Good luck........Pop

 

[donrae]

If I do the float test and still unsure about eating a found egg, I feed it to the dogs or cats.

When I found a nest like that, I'd leave some of the eggs, like you did, and mark them all around with a sharpie, so I could easily tell the new eggs from the old. Seemed like if I took all the eggs, they'd quit laying there and I'd have to find the new spot!

 

[Me & Jack]

We used to free range all of our chickens. A few months into it we had an old barn on our property torn down. Under the flooring they found a nest with over forty eggs in it -- none of them had exploded, thank goodness. We finally were able to understand why our laying rate was so low!