Missing egg

[nancysmith2]

2 days ago my girls were locked out of the nest. Hubby forgot to take down the barrier. We have pullets that like to sleep/poo in there. So we close them out at night. There were no eggs that day. I looked around as best I could it is almost dark when I get home. Today behind the coop I found small fragments of a brown egg. I don't know what happened. I have never had a problem with them eating eggs. I have a 6' privacy fence and I don't think anything would have gotten the egg but the chickens. If the RIR layed outside the nest is it possible the pullets ate the egg? Or could another bird have eaten the egg? I hope these pullets don't get a taste for eggs.

 

[Tweeza]

I think lots of critters can scale a tall fence. During the summer months we were losing eggs to a squirrel. Never saw it happen but that is all that could get to the eggs. There were days we'd only get one or two eggs from 10 hens.

 

[Plain Old Dee]

It's possible that a cat did the dirty deed. Our neighbors had one that would sneak in our henhouse from time to time and sneak an egg. We thought it was our own hens doing it until we caught the cat in the act. We didn't say anything to the neighbors - it didn't happen all that often. One day the cat got killed by a car and the problem never reocurred...

 

[PandoraTaylor]

if it was laid outside and got broken ........any of the chickens might have eatten it. I found one on the ground in the run just a few bits of shell, it appeared to me that one of the hens laid it while on the roost, and it was eatten by the flock. I removed the remaining shell to the compost pile. and made sure that all my hens are inside at night.