hiding eggs?????

[JarrodnJojo2016]

I have a hen that is hiding eggs....
she was laying her eggs in the nesting box, and then bam! there wasn't any eggs in the nest! I just figured she had finally stopped till spring. until the other day, all the birds were out in the run, in the far corner of my coop was a big pile of shavings that were obviously scratched up like that, I looked real close an there they were. is this normal? is she trying to go broody?

 

[chippy99th]

It's normal. She might be trying to go broody, but if she's not sitting on them, no. Some hens just like to hide their eggs. You can try to train her to lay in the right spot (maybe try keeping her in the coop until she's done laying for the day?) but if you know where the nest is and it's not somewhere dangerous, why bother?

We started putting wood shavings behind our hot water heater when we realized some of our hens wanted to hide their eggs there. We also had a couple hens that always wanted to hide theirs, and whenever we found their nests they'd relocate. Finally we just left a couple eggs in there all the time and they stayed in that spot thinking they were being sneaky, lol.

We've had hens go broody both in the nesting boxes and their own hiding spots. There's no difference, except the really clever hiders are more likely to get away with it!