Hens eating their own eggs?!

[Putt-Putney]

Hello!
I have about 15 hens in one of my coops. They've all been together since they were young. I have mostly New Hampshire Reds, a few Rhode Islands, and Brahmas. Recently, all about the age of a year or so. Lately, we have not been receiving any eggs! I couldn't figure it out for a while until I saw the egg-eating happening. I love all of my girls, and I'm at a loss of how to solve this! Their diets are fine, their health is fine- but this egg-eating definitely isn't fine! Any ideas? I've never dealt with this before?

Thank you,
Kait

 

[Sakmeht]

Well, if it's only one hen so far, you'll need to identify her asap because she'll teach it to the others. If they're all doing it, you could try adding some wooden eggs to the nests (or even if it's just the one hen). This discouraged my hen from egg eating fairly quickly. Put several in each nest box. They won't like how it feels when they peck one. Some people inject bright dye into a few eggs, and then you'll be able to identify who's doing it since hopefully they'll have bright pink or blue or whatever color of your choice all over their face. To discourage, you could blow out some eggs and fill them with hot mustard. That might also discourage them.

If it's really widespread and you have a bit of cash to upgrade, you could install roll-a-way nest boxes so that they can't get to the eggs.
Others might suggest culling the offending hen, but I like to try other things first!

Good luck!