Hen eating eggs

[Chipmunk Chicks]

Once egg eating starts, it can be a very difficult habit to break. Any chance you can collect earlier? Have you tried filling fake plastic eggs or other egg substitutes?
Unless one of the ducks is sitting on a nest, IMO they are not truly broody. Maybe the one duck is eating the egg that is not hers.
My Muscovy ducks often share a nest so I will find one or two ducks sitting on multiple eggs in the same nest. But it is not unusual to find eggs in other areas in the coop, in the run, and even in their pool.

She's back to sitting, and was sitting on just the two this morning again. I do think she's eating one that is not hers, and then sitting on the remaining two.

Collecting earlier would be hard, as I really have no idea when they lay. I put them in pretty late already, so I would have to set a MOTN alarm for myself to go out there and see what's going on. I could try checking at like 5AM, which is still not even sunup, but I suspect they are laying late in the evening or wee hours of the morning, which even by 5AM it might be too late. But it might be worth a shot, just to get a better idea of what's actually happening.

I have some fake eggs, but none of them are white! Lol. Can I use like a blue plastic Easter egg? This just seems so bizarre to me, I feel like someone is going to have to explain it. Lol

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

I love how her sisters stand guard over her.

 

[DukesDucks]

Egg eating has not been a problem with my ducks. I use red, yellow, green, and blue, whatever is handy, plastic eggs with the chickens. The key seems to be filling the plastic eggs (I use sand) with something so they have a similar weight to a real egg.

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

Egg eating has not been a problem with my ducks. I use red, yellow, green, and blue, whatever is handy, plastic eggs with the chickens. The key seems to be filling the plastic eggs (I use sand) with something so they have a similar weight to a real egg.

Okay, sand I have! So just fill a plastic egg with sand, and put it in the hutch with them tonight, and then if she tries to eat it she will get a bill-full of sand???

 

[DukesDucks]

I suggest that in the morning when you collect eggs, replace the ones that are there with equal number of plastic ones.

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

The stage is set:

She had been sitting. She's really only taken those one or two random mornings off in what feels like a very long time. So I gathered her two remaining eggs, and left the blue ones in their place. One of the other hens was already checking them out! Lol

"Wut dis?" Hahah I hope it helps...

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

WE GOT THREE EGGS!!!! Thank you so much for all your help! I will keep at it, but hopefully at least now I have a strategy going forward! How long can I expect to want to keep the sand eggs in there before the habit is really broken? It was just barely a week I think we were dealing with this, if I started the thread last Tuesday.

Bianca was sitting, but agitated lol (I was there a little later than usual, whoops), really it looked like they were both trying to sit... One plastic egg was broken open, but the other three real eggs were intact!

We also got a bonus egg in the run again yesterday, so I'm wondering if whoever laid the monster egg is somehow laying two a day now? I didn't think that birds could really do that, and we'll see what happens going forward.

It honestly makes me question what has really been going on... Is one egg coming out soft in the hut overnight, and then a second "good egg" is being laid in the run? Is it possible some mornings an egg might not have been laid, but I was finding wet yolk and broken shell from the day before? I would have thought for sure it would be dried out from the previous day though, so it still is all a bit weird to me...

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

Yesterday, we had a minor setback, only two good eggs, one broken. But today was a huge success! All six eggs, three real and three plastic, were found buried in the bedding, and Bianca was not sitting. She was still quite vocal!! Lol But at least we got three eggs!

 

[DukesDucks]

Good news. I wouldn't bother increasing the number of plastic eggs.

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

So it's been up and down.

Question: I did get three eggs today, but one clearly is badly cracked. Does this look like it happened as it was being laid? Or is this due to a determined nibbler? The crack goes halfway around, which makes me think maybe she was working at it, and I interrupted her.