My chickens enjoyed an egg!!!

[chickadde]

My chickens are eating the eggs. I collect daily but last week I missed one day due to being out of town. Since then they are eating them before I can get them collected. What suggestions can you give me to stop them from doing this? Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks

 

[emys]

OH, I am so sorry for you! This is usually a very difficult to break habit. I suggest you do some research on the topic on here.

First be certain your hens are getting proper nutrition! (Too many snacks can ruin their overall protein intake.) You might also try adding some vitamins to their water to help out.

Then there are various methods of addressing the egg eating problem (with various levels of success reported). Here is a short list of methods I've seen.

1) Roll away nest boxes
2) mustard/dish soap (re)filled eggs
3) fake ceramic eggs placed in nest boxes
4) remove all bedding and nest boxes from the coop for a period of time to keep the chickens from having anywhere to wedge the egg and peck it open - the idea being a free rolling egg will not break open, but roll away
5) culling the flock and starting over

 

[PoppiesChicks]

I had this problem too. One mustard filled egg left on the coop floor and voila. No more egg eating. They pecked and tried to eat it but I found it on the floor half eaten. They must have really hated the mustard because they haven't eaten any since.
Good luck!

 

[stacey333]

I also had this problem. The breeder told me that if I ever expected to have baby chicks that if I didn't stop it the hens would become canibals and eat all eggs. Our smallest hen is a bantam and she's the boss. Once she started setting the eggs the other hens won't go anywhere close to them and some how the cycle broke on it's own.
Some people feed there chickens the egg shell but don't wash and bake them at 325 degrees for 2 min. then crumble the shell. The shell is calcium rich and makes for strong egg shells but they still need the regular grit. Good luck!