My chickens are eating their own eggs

[SueSaur]

My chickens are pecking and eating their own eggs before we can gather them in the afternoon. Today I had four cracked and eaten eggs of the 8 that were in the coop. Why?

 

[Imp]

Sorry you are going through this, and welcome to BYC.

Egg eating can be a tough problem. Some people will recommend culling egg eaters.

It is possible to break them from this: I did 1 1/2 years ago.

Sometimes it is because they are not getting enough protein in their food. Are they on a layer feed? Limit treats. You can supplement protein with meat, cooked egg, cheese, yogurt, seeds, nuts, and/or catfood.

Also some people have reported success with filling blown out eggs with hot mustard, horseradish, or liquid soap.

Try putting golf/pingpong balls in the nest or fake eggs.

Collect eggs often, don't give them a chance to eat them

Keep the nests dark. Some people put curtain in front of the nests.

As a last resort you may need roll away nests. (The eggs roll away from the hen into a safe area)

Good luck,

Imp

 

[newTexan2chickens]

I had this problem when I added 2 hens.... at least I think they were pecking them and it wasn't an accidentally broken egg. The day after the 2 new hens were intorduced I had 2 broken eggs out of 2, the next day we watched them like a hawk and still had 2 broken out of 3, but 1 was just cracked. We removed one of the hens to isolation and the 3rd day no broken eggs. We added brown fake eggs (already had golf balls). Day 4 we had 3 eggs, 1 cracked. Day 5 no cracked. Added back isolated chicken and all has been well. Not sure what happened really but 2 new chickens are cream egg layers and the other 2 are BR so brown eggs... and only the brown ones were getting broken. It has been several weeks now and all is well. May have to go through this again though when we add the 2 FBCM that lay really dark eggs!