No Shells, If not a thin shell on eggs. Causing chickens to peck and eat their own eggs!

[Baxter-Shamo]

So over the weekend I brought 12 lovely looking brown hens to finish off my flock until my Welsummers hatch/lay. I didn't get any eggs but I saw numerous hens sitting so I thought I should investigate. I looked in the Coop and there was egg yolk all around the corners, So today I thought I'd have a day in my yard watching the Animals while doing a bit of gardening hoping I'd catch the crooked egg pecker red handed, However this wasn't the case, All of my chickens are laying eggs without shells, or they have a very thin shell on them that're cracking when they drop from the chicken.

I'm hoping that the last owner of the chickens haven't been feeding them enough oyster shells and the problem doesn't lay deeper than that.
I've gone ahead and chucked crushed up cockle and oyster shells in there hoping this will fix the problem I'm having and hoping they haven't gotten into the habit of pecking their eggs purposely.

Has anybody else ever dealt this problem? If so, If the worse comes to worse and they do continue to peck their eggs I could do with a few tips on stopping them.

-Cheers

 

[Judy]

They are going to eat any broken egg. That doesn't make them egg eaters in the sense of hens who will break open a good egg to eat it. If you can get the thin shells stopped, maybe they will leave them alone. You could try a Tums in the water now and then for even more calcium, but you don't want to do this every day.

If you do wind up with a true egg eating flock, there's a good article in the learning center on egg eaters. Just search in there for egg eater.