When my daughter went out to gather the eggs today, she told me two of them had just been laid and she wanted to know how long to leave them. I asked her why she said that, and she told me they were still wet and sticky. So I went in and picked them up, they were not just laid at all, they had a bit of egg yolk on them.
I brought them inside the house and looked at all the eggs, thinking one just got broken as they sometimes do. That is when I noticed tiny pieces of broken egg shell on them. Brown egg shell, and we have not had any brown eggs in days.
The hen that lays brown eggs has just started laying again after hatching some chicks. I went back out to the coop with a flashlight and checked the boxes, sure enough there was a brown egg in the back of one of the nests, destroyed. My first thought was one of the hens must have started eating eggs, but this egg was totally smushed and the shell was for the most part whole, missing most all of the contents (there was a little on the straw and on those two eggs).
I checked all the boxes and that was the only one that had anything in it. We had a possum get in once, and we still never figured out just how it got in. LOL It ate a brown egg, but it was in pieces. For the last few weeks we have been doing work on the coop, making it larger and more secure.
There are a few spots that I think something small could sneak in, but I do not see any feces, fur, scratches or any sign of an animal. I am thinking this has to be a predator of some sort not an egg eating hen, and I am leaning toward a snake.
Any thoughts?
