HELP !!! Disappearing eggs !! UPDATE 7/5 We have 1 chick and a pip

Chicken Rustler

Grabs em n runs
10 Years
Feb 17, 2009
9,388
75
311
Ethel, Washington
My Coop
My Coop
I have my neighbors silkie setting on eggs in my barn. She was setting on 8 eggs in an area totally enclosed in 1" chicken wire with my 3 14 week banties. She started setting on 2 of the eggs then other hens added 6 more before she was moved to this secure location. We are at the point that the first 2 should be hatching any time. So tonight I went to check for any signs and 2 eggs were gone. I did find a few small pieces of shell and that's it. No chicks no sign of there ever being any. Could / would the hen have destroyed the 2 eggs ? Could / would the banties have destroyed the eggs. There is no sign of any remains. The only 3 people who go into our barn are wife, neighbor and I, none of us had anything to do with this and NOBODY else has been in there I am positive. Tonight we put the hen with eggs in a metal 100gal tub with 1" chicken wire over it. We thought this would do 2 things. Remove the chance that it was the banties and the very remote chance of an outside predator. I am so puzzled by this and have checked all possibilities.
 
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Chickens, rats, snake, another predator sucha as a weasel. Lots of possibilities.


Check out the predator identification sticky at the beginning of the predators and pests section.
 
When something similar happened with one of mine, fewer chicks than eggs that had been set, I eventually found the missing chicks. They were dead, and flattened so they were hard to find in the bedding. It happens sometimes, a chick may hatch and get squashed by accident. It it may be a weak or defective one, die right after hatch, or even before it completely hatches. Sometimes, an umbilicus will bleed enough that the chick bleeds out, they don't have much blood. It's very seldom a case of the chick being killed deliberately by another chicken, though that can happen, it's unusual.

Another possibility is a couple of infertile eggs, or quitters, that broke and the egg part was absorbed by the bedding.
 
Well last week we had 1 hatch and tonight we have a pip. Very eggsciting times for first timers.
celebrate.gif
 
Over easy WOW hadn't heard from ya in so long I had begun to think maybe ya had crawled in a nest and gone broody er somthin. We are starting to get into it now. Wife got the first egg from one of our 17 week pullets on exactly the day of week 17. Then another the next day then Saturday. Guess they figured it was a holiday so they didn't have to work. Then today another and we know at least 2 of them are from different chickens since we saw who dunnit.

ETA by the way those were stolen chicken they were not borrowed. Well maybe borrowed with no intent of returning them.
 
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