my chicken eat her own eggs!!! Why and how can i stop her?

[browny]

my chicken eat her own eggs!!! Why and how can i stop her?

 

[dadsdeercamp]

never had that happen yet

 

[browny]

Isn't A Little Strange?

 

[dadsdeercamp]

i've heard of it

 

[Fred's Hens]

It is a bad trait.

Try a couple things. First, make sure she isn't having a protein shortage and is resorting to doing this for survival reasons. Feed her super quality, high protein feed ONLY for a week. No low protein snacks or treats of any kind.

Try to gather the egg, if she is regular time layer, immediately after she lays it. What a pain. Worth a try.

Finally, an egg eating behavior is sometimes an adopted or learned behavior that is very, very hard to break. Most hen keepers cull any bird who adopts it. Whether the bad behavior is contagious to the rest of the flock is open to debate, but nonetheless, few take that chance.

 

[Smiles-N-Sunshine]

I would add that the hen could be wanting the calcium from the shell as well. Layer pellets have calcium added, or feed oyster shell grit free choice if you're using something else like Purina Flockraiser.

I have an occasional egg eater, and usually the whole egg is gone but the other eggs in the nest box have yolk on them. Much better than last year, when someone was pecking a small hole in just about every egg!

 

[BellevueOmlet]

Chicken dinner?

 

[pinkcoop]

I have 2 girls that are eating their eggs too. I have read they lack protein , and other sites say calcium? Which is it? Or is it really both of them?
What have you found that works the best to break the hens of this? Does feeding them the shells cause them to like the taste of the egg.

 

[deathfromabove]

They are inquisitive animals so after they lay they check it out and some times they get a little to aggressive and crack an egg see the stuff coming out and try it then they are hooked on it. I found if you build the nest box on a downward angle and put fake grass rug in and put a wall up say about 5 inches from the back so as they lay the egg and hits the rug it rolls back threw a raised wall onto the back wall and they can't get to it.