Rookie mistake...

[song of joy]

Try a float test. Some of the commonly sold ceramic eggs (e.g., Happy Hen brand at Tractor Supply) are hollow and float. Unless the outside of the ceramic egg is marked, I can't tell it apart from real eggs . . . the color is so realistic and the shape is so accurate!

 

[HimmelbergerHen]

Haha, oh I have plenty of flashlights, but none of them have decent batteries!! I ended up making my husband go out and pick up batteries so I could candle them, and surprise, surprise! Only one of them was a fake! It was the brown one on the right hand side in the picture above. That guy didn't float either, so I guess candling is the only way to tell?

Anyway, now I know that there's a missing ceramic egg somewhere in that coop and for the life of me I can't tell where it is. And it's not a small coop, I can get in there and walk around and look and I still can't find it. I did find one of my Maran eggs laying down on the floor, so I feel like I've probably been missing some since I didn't see that one and I still can't find the ceramic one. :-(

 

[HimmelbergerHen]

Whoever designed these things deserves a raise haha

 

[Zoomie]

@HimmelbergerHen sometimes mine will toss aside the fake egg and it gets kind of buried in the bedding. I have two of them, and I check for eggs twice a day. At the same time I make sure I have both fake eggs, and yes, sometimes they are *really* buried in there, the hens must have thought they were dogs or something!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I put smiley faces on my fake eggs so I can tell them apart as well as it makes me smile. You might just have to crack them and find out. Sometimes my girls kick the fake ones out and I find them in the floor bedding.