Mustard eggs... Explosion!

[brennamae]

We have an egg eating problem in our flock and we haven't been able to manage it well this winter... In Maine the freezing weather (coupled with our newborn daughter and all the time dedicated to her!) caused a lot of early spring eggs to freeze, crack open.... Then be eaten when we couldn't get to them in time.

Now that our newborn is a bit older and spring is upon us, we collect eggs at least 4 times a day, and have put in new stone eggs to help prevent eating.

Alas! Still a certain layer finds them tasty (we have yet to discover the culprit...s?) and we have decided to make mustard eggs.

Making the holes went fine, as did blowing out the shells. We then rinsed them and found a post that said to microwave them to sterilize. I usually cook the shells, but realize this might cause the eggs to be too different to the chickens, so we used the microwave as suggested. After drying we sealed up one hole with wax (just from a standard candle) and filled the egg with mustard. We didn't fill them full, but at least half full.... Almost 3/4 full perhaps? After painstakingly filling four mustard eggs, we rejoiced and sealed them up with wax.

Not more then five minutes later one broke! A half hour later, an explosion from another! Then, then third! We are waiting to see if the fourth survives the night in our house before going to the coop with it... However, I wonder if anyone else has had this issue? Or at least might have some insight? Should we not fill the eggs so full? Use a different kind of wax? Wait longer between rain ring them, drying them then filling them?

Cheers!

 

[Sarevan]

I'm glad I am not the only one that had exploding mustard eggs.

I think it has something to do with the microwave. I tried filling them and leaving a small pinhole and they still cracked up. So I have used eggs I have just blown out and filled with mustard then sealed with no problem. I filled them about 3/4's of the way with slightly watered down mustard, leaving a small pinhole in the wax just incase.

I caught the egg eater, seperated her and left her eggs that had been filled with the watered down no peck formula. Took 4 days before she left them alone. No problems with her since last fall. They only get eggs that have been cracked in the nest and either boiled or scrambled up. Shells are fed back to them smashed into fine pieces mixed with eggs in mash.

 

[brennamae]

So strange the exploding!

Yes, we only feed our chickens scrambled eggs (from cracking in the coop!) and keep shells and feed back to them after baking them and crushing them real fine.

We will try today with round two of mustard egg filling - we hope this helps to solve the issue. We fear we might have more then one egg eater in the bunch. Alas..