I AM SO MAD AT MY HENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Baby Chick]

GR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok so for the past few days we have not been getting any eggs. Now I have a fenced in yard but I let the chickens free range where ever they want with in the fence. So earlier this evening I'm looking around the yard & I have a huge pricker bush about 20 ft. long & about 5 ft. hight, I look in & I see TONS of eggs!!!!!!! So I tell my Mom & we spent an hour cliping, hacking, bleeding, and sweating trying to get to the eggs! We finally get to them and I put them all in the egg basket, but then I see one more WAY in there. So I have to go to the other side & I reach way in & I feel it, and then I feel goo. The egg was so rotten that the second I touched it, it crumbled!!!!!!!!! In total there were 28 eggs including the one that turned to goo. I did float & shake, 20 of them were ok, the rest were gonners. Now we have only had this probem one time before about 2 years ago & when we collected them that time they stopped. I just don't understand why they started again! Does anyone know why?

 

[Amarisus]

Chickens like to lay where others lay so if just one chicken layed in the bush another would see the egg and think "Oh that's where I'm supposed to lay!" and more would see the eggs and so forth and so on. Try putting decoy eggs (ping-pong balls sometimes work) in the spot where you want them to lay. Also I would keep that bush cut back as much as possible they like privacy when laying and what safer place to lay than a big thick bush where even the humans can't get too lol

 

[bawkbawkbawk]

I put golf balls on the counter inside the coop designated for laying and they all just figured it out. Well, except for the Silkie, who is 10 months old, has never laid an egg, but is behaving like a broody. Five out of six isn't bad, I guess.

Did something happen to foul or disturb the area where you had them laying before? Something that made them decide to go looking elsewhere?

 

[ThaiChick]

When my hens started laying in odd places I bought wooden eggs at hobby lobby for my nesting boxes. Then confined the flock to the fenced pen attached to my coop for a few days. They got the hint and went back to laying in the boxes. My only exception is my one bantam Spanish white face that is an excellent flyer. She flies up to a shelf in the rafters to lay.

 

[ignatz]

Are you mad at them??????????????????????????????? Or just frustrated with them?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

It seems they're not too happy with the situation in the coop where you want them to lay.............................

Figure that out and you have it licked.................................................................

 

[Mum]

You could also put some wire, a couple of feet high, around that bush to deter them sneaking in and laying there.