Keep finding eggs outside the nest boxes and coop??

[rschunk]

Sorry I wasn't more explicit...I picked up the two eggs outside the boxes.....I also built a 'trolley' a couple weeks ago with the intent of putting them into it one at a time and finding out which aren't laying....they are going into the freezer. One I caught on the nest and marked it with a band on the leg. They are also pecking one another...one of them has NO feathers on it's neck....

All of a sudden I'm getting all these problems....they are 2 years and a month old....maybe I need to cull all 6 of them and start over...

 

[grammaC]

My 22 week old chickens have just begun laying (well, some of them have) and usually the eggs are in the nest boxes. Once I found a soft one under the roost and another time I saw just the yolk and white under there, no shell. It's kind of like they were caught by surprise when the egg came... but anyway, my real question is: tonight I noticed one out in the run in the straw. I just put a bunch of new straw in there yesterday. I have no idea how long the egg was there. It looked a little trampled-on, but when I cracked it into a glass bowl, it looked and smelled normal. Is it safe to eat? The run is in the sun and it was about 90 degrees today

 

[Den in Penn]

Should be alright. It takes more than one 90 degree day for them to go bad.

 

[debid]

Sorry I wasn't more explicit...I picked up the two eggs outside the boxes.....I also built a 'trolley' a couple weeks ago with the intent of putting them into it one at a time and finding out which aren't laying....they are going into the freezer. One I caught on the nest and marked it with a band on the leg. They are also pecking one another...one of them has NO feathers on it's neck....

All of a sudden I'm getting all these problems....they are 2 years and a month old....maybe I need to cull all 6 of them and start over...

Have you actually seen them pecking one another? I ask because molting starts at the head/neck and can be quite dramatic. Seasonal molts have already started at my house with a couple of the gals. It also accounts for a decrease in laying.

As for the moving eggs, I have a gal that kept moving eggs last spring. She was also spending more time than normal in the nest. I think she was having broody thoughts but never fully committed because she'd move the eggs to the nest where I'd find her egg and then sit on them for a few hours. I knew they weren't all laid where I found them because some were fakes that I'd placed... I finally caught her "red handed".

I doubt you can solve the mystery without catching the act.

 

[ChillyChicken]

I have 4 hens I got as day-old chicks at the end of April, and they have free ranged in my yard since they feathered out. At night they were coming in to my screened porch through the doggie door (have 2 Chihuahua mixes) and were roosting on the rail by the front door. Right up against the door! The presents they were leaving on the doorstep got to hubby, so I finally got a friend to help make a movable pen for them to overnight in. They HATE it. Mealworm treats and scratch have made it easier to get them to go in for the night. They had developed a really tight schedule of roosting, so it made it easier to get them in for the night.
In the pen I have a double nest box, a 2x4 roost, food and water, and fresh grass when I move the pen. I have been anxiously awaiting eggs, but none have "magically" appeared. ...
This morning when I let the girls out to roam on our acre, one ran to the barbed wire fence to our part-time neighbor's yard into the bushes and under a sage brush plant and fallen pine limb. She scooted under the branch and I made note of the location. This evening when I put them back in the pen, I investigated the spot where she went into hiding. Barbed wire makes holes in new jeans when climbing fences to get the eggs out of a nest. There were NINE eggs there!!!!
I don't know how many of them are laying, especially since the eggs were at least 3 shades of brown. Thanks to earlier posts here, I think I will confine the girls round the clock for a while to see if they will use the nest box. Now to figure out how many are laying!.
The girls are a RSL, RIR, and 2 BO's.