How do you stop egg eating chickens.

[Shark Akhrrana]

I had 1 rooster and two hens. They were fine laying their eggs every day. A friend of ours said that he couldn't take care of his chickens anymore. We were about to buy more hens so we thought we were going to save some money and get the hens for free. He said that ground squirrels were eating the eggs. We took the 5 hens and the rooster home. The next morning My brother found that it was the hens that were eating the eggs. We separated our 2 hens and rooster in a different place this morning. I have no idea what to do with the other hens. Please help

 

[Imp]

First off Welcome to BYC.

Egg eating is a tough problem. There are a few things you can do to try and stop it.

Fake(wood, ceramic, golf balls etc) in the nests. The idea is that they will peck at the fake eggs and get no satisfaction.
Blow out eggs and refill with something like hot horseradish, hot mustard, or liquid soap. Same idea, they won't like the results.
Keep the nest dim/dark. The idea is if they cannot see the eggs they won't eat them.
Some people have even put up curtains to darken the nests.
Collect often so they don't get the chance to eat them.
There are roll away nest that are slanted so the eggs roll out of the reach of the hens.
I had success with rearranging the inside of the coop, to shake things up, and using the fake eggs.

Good luck

Imp

 

[Shark Akhrrana]

thanks. I'll see if i can do that. Sounds like a very good idea. And thanks for the welcome.
The problem was that teh guy who had them before was at the hospital and was unable to feed them. The person who was taking care of his house forgotto feed them for a week so to survive they ate their eggs. but now that they are here and i have to deal with the problem.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You can try what Imp said. Maybe it will work. If you can identify a ringleader and eliminate her or him, the others might be OK. I personally would not rehome them because that is just giving someone else the problem. I had an egg eater. It took a bit to identify the egg eater and I saw others eating opened eggs. When I ate the ringleader, the others no longer had anyone to open the eggs for them and they stopped eating eggs. I hope your problem is this simple.

I would keep them separated from your others until this problem is solved. They can teach the others.