My chicken is eating its own eggs!

[Lucky7Flock]

Hello! I have two Rhode-Island Reds. One is small, content, and very well-behaved. The other is large and loves to escape from her pen even though her wings are clipped. She also lays huge eggs, often with two or even three yolks. For the past two weeks, I thought the eggs were getting cracked, so I added hay to their nesting boxes, but I've still been finding eggs broken open and the insides gone. I suspect it's the large hen eating the eggs since she's my trouble-maker. I've been able to pin down the laying time and collect the eggs from the smaller hen untouched. I've tried feeding them milk and yogurt. I've tried putting mustard and pepper in the eggshell, but she seemed to love the taste. Today, I finally locked her in a separate pen so that I can find out for sure which one is doing the egg-eating. Any other suggestions on how to stop this behavior? Thanks!

P.S. I also have four chicks that are currently in a heated aquarium indoors. I fear that my trouble-making hen will cause problems for them when I try to introduce them to the coop in about a month. I'm hoping to have her egg-eating stopped so that she can rejoin her sister and then I can use the separate pen to slowly introduce the new chicks while keeping them in a protected area.

 

[Alaskan]

I have always thought that a hen that eats eggs has to be found out and killed before it teaches all of the other hens to eat eggs.

Two winters ago I was getting way fewer eggs than I thought I should be getting. I started forcing my children to sit out in the coop for hours a day just to stare at chickens. We finally found the bad hen and killed her. Her crop was stuffed with eggs! Luckily for me, she hadn't taught any of my other hens.

 

[Lucky7Flock]

Killing her isn't an option. She is my daughter's pet. If we can't make her stop somehow, we may have to keep her separated from the flock, give her away, or, as a last resort, let her go in the mountains. Any other ideas on how to get her to stop?

 

[Alaskan]

I suppose you can try those nest boxes where the eggs roll away into safety right after they are laid.

Or, you could house her by herself, so that she only eats her own eggs and doesn't teach anyone else to eat theirs.

I have no idea how to break her of the habit. Eggs are so super yummy.

Sorry I can't be more helpful! *hug*

 

[Lucky7Flock]

I've got her separated now, so we'll see how that goes. I'll have to look up those nesting boxes, never heard of those. I've tried everything I've read and nothing has worked so far, so I guess I just need to keep her separated so that she doesn't teach the other hen to eat eggs.

 

[Lucky7Flock]

Update: So, I locked her up in a separate cage whenever I found an eaten egg. I also gave both the chickens some greek yogurt and I added oyster shells to a free-snack feeder. I noticed that whenever I let them out to free-range in the backyard, they ran over to the bird feeder where there were sunflower seed shells all over the ground. So, I added another free-snack feeder with sunflower seeds of their own. For a week now, I've collected eggs from both chickens intact, untouched. Even if I don't get them until hours after they were laid, they are still untouched. I was literally within one day of taking that one chicken up into the mountains and letting her go. I'm so proud of her for making a dramatic turnaround.

 

[Alaskan]

Wow!

Very wonderful!

I am so glad it turned out.

 

[Biginner]

I HAD ABOUT 4 OR 5 EGG EATERS. I GAVE THEM OISTER SHELLS, AND THE EGG EATING STOPPED RIGHT AWAY.

 

[ChickenLover200]

and all 27 chickens i have started eating eggs and they would NOT eat oyster shell so we microwaved egg shells from eggs we ate and crushed them up smaller that a sunflower seed no bigger and took them in a bag to them and we have been getting all our eggs since there may be a crushed egg every once in a while in the coop but they don't touch it we tried the mustard and putting wooden eggs in in fact we still have wooden eggs in with them

 

[Ladypoet33]

I'm being given 20 hens. Laying hens, but I have been warned that they eat their eggs. I was told to put mustard inside of eggs, and leave them in the pen to teach them not to eat them. I read the post about giving them oyster shells. I'm a newbie to this. Building my coop today. Do you buy the oyster shells whole, or are they ground and used to feed the chickens?