A quick question. When a hen seems to have lost the knowledge of knowing the difference between pooping and laying, is it time for the crock pot? My EE is only 2 years old and she just went through a most ugly molt. Since she's "come back", I get an egg every other day. The last time she laid the egg then poop in the nest. I really had to scrub the egg to clean it. I just found 6 eggs in one nest this morning that I was going to wait a bit to collect but found her on the nest to lay hers. Made her mad when I got the eggs so she couldn't mess um up. Is it time to skin her?
She's still young and I think she just "messed up" a bit, excuse the pun. But give her a chance and if she continues doing it, well, it's up to you. But accidents happen and chickens tend to go when they need to go, regardless of where they happen to be at the time.
She may being going broody if she got upset when you took the eggs. I think she's too young to give up on her. Give her some time to see if the pooping in the nest is something she's doing all the time.
I had this exact problem with a hen, after her molt I started getting her eggs and they were covered in poo. Well, when she molted her butt fluff came in extra thick, and she wasn't able to keep her hygene up, so to speak. With no offense to any that might be easily grossed out, but she had a big mountain of "dingleberry" and it was soft enough that when she laid an egg it stuck all over the egg when the egg exited her vent, past the (very) messy feathers, and then she sat on it some so it got worse. I inspected her posterior and took some blunt scissors to her fluff, and trimmed her up. I haven't had a poopy egg since. I hope your problem is this simple-- see if her rear end fluff is catching her poo and if so just trim her up a bit. Two really isn't that old for a hen, so I suspect that there is another explanation. Good luck!
