Hen eating the eggs!!

[Carolyn252]

Found one good egg and one smashed and eaten egg in the nest box yesterday.

I'm not sure which of the three hens is doing this. May be more than one of them.

So yesterday, I took two good eggs from my kitchen counter and poked a hole in each end with a bulletin board push pin.

Then blew the contents of each egg into a frying pan and cooked up my lunch.

Then put some jarred horseradish and yellow mustard and a bit of water into a small food processor and pureed it all into a thin consistency.

Used an eyedropper and filled both eggs about halfway full of that stuff.

Cut open a butternut squash and waited twenty minutes for the sticky juice to ooze out onto the cut surface of the squash.

Smeared some of that stickiness onto the pierced holes of the two eggs, waited a few hours til it was good and dry, and gently placed the two eggs in the nest box late yesterday afternoon.

Ten o'clock this morning, found both doctored eggs intact, and one new egg all smashed and eaten.

Considering my options:

Just wait and see if any of them try eating the doctored eggs.

Isolate one of the three in a separate coop and see if either coop's nest box presents me with smashed and eaten eggs over the next few days. (The separate coop is right next to the main coop, so they'll all still be able to see and talk to each other, so the stress of separation will be less than if it were total isolation.)

Try rigging up a slanted floor for the nest box so the eggs can immediately roll away downhill beyond a barrier so the hen can't reach it.

 

[Carolyn252]

Found two intact perfect eggs in the nest box this afternoon. And only ONE of the doctored eggs. I think when I cleaned up the broken egg this morning, one of the doctored eggs was also there all smashed up and I cleaned up both.

Maybe she got a mouthful of mustard/horseradish and learned her lesson. (wishful thinking?)

 

[Erica]

Hi Carolyn252,

the mustard egg would possibly put her off for a short time (unfortunately I've never found it to be a cure). I hope it works for you.
If not, I'd say roll nest or no nestbox at all (so they lay on the floor; the eggs roll away from beaks as long as there are no obstacles) might do the trick. Make sure the eggshells are nice and hard (shell grit etc) so they have a better chance.

Beware of bringing any new pullets into this flock; it would be far better to leave the current hens until they're no longer laying, then give them away or sell them (telling the new owner about their habit) while starting pullets alone so they don't pick up any bad habits.

cheers
Erica

 

[Carolyn252]

Hi Carolyn252,

the mustard egg would possibly put her off for a short time (unfortunately I've never found it to be a cure). I hope it works for you.
If not, I'd say roll nest or no nestbox at all (so they lay on the floor; the eggs roll away from beaks as long as there are no obstacles) might do the trick. Make sure the eggshells are nice and hard (shell grit etc) so they have a better chance.

Beware of bringing any new pullets into this flock; it would be far better to leave the current hens until they're no longer laying, then give them away or sell them (telling the new owner about their habit) while starting pullets alone so they don't pick up any bad habits.

cheers
Erica

Oy! I've got two new Pullets coming in just a few weeks. Better cure this before they show up!!

 

[Carolyn252]

Found another smashed and eaten egg in the nest box yesterday morning. So, when DH got home from work in the late afternoon, we got a small sheet of plywood, got out the old jigsaw, and cut the plywood to the size of the nestbox floor.

The front of the nestbox has a lip on the front of it, where the hens walk in. We put the front edge of the new floor on top of that lip, then dropped the floor in, on to the existing floor, and voila, the nestbox floor is now slanted.

I got some eggs from the kitchen counter and put them at the front of the nestbox, and each one rolled right on down to the back of the nestbox.

Next, we cut a smaller board to fit vertically in the nestbox as a new back wall, but we raised it to allow an egg to fit under it. From the outside of the nestbox, we drove two screws into the edge of this new false backboard to keep it in place.

That backboard doesn't go all the way to the top of the box, so if I need to, I can reach over it.

Took all the pine shavings out of the nestbox; only thing in there now is one of those plastic pads with the directional plastic spikes encouraging the eggs to roll. That one pad isn't large enough to cover the whole floor, I'll order more pads this morning .

Can't wait to see what happens with egg laying today!!

 

[Carolyn252]

Worked perfectly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic.

Thanks, Opa, for starting this whole idea of rollaway floors for nest boxes.