Should I buy eggs or wait it out?

[mortie]

MC - boy you are braver than I am! I try to keep babies out of my house as much as possible

Adeth - you have an egg breaker? Are you sure? (that's not as stupid of a question as it sounds). You're finding broken eggs or just a wet spot in the nest box? How are the shells? Sometimes whne the shells aren't hard an egg will get stepped on and break, then the chickens eat it naturally because why wouldn't they...but if you've got a genuine egg breaker on your hands, that's a shame. What are you feeding? How much?

 

[Adeth Chicken]

Yeah, we have seen two of our girls pecking at a Bantam egg, and an australorp. They get a mix of layer crumbles, complete feed pellets, and wild birds seed. On top of daily treats, cabbage, corn, lettuce etc. They have access all day.

 

[Scrambles55]

Welcome to the thread Adeth. Good luck with your egg eaters.

 

[Adeth Chicken]

Egg eater one and two from left to right, Phoenix and orange blossom!! Lil road runner also., hopefully she doesn't take note to what her friends have been up to!

 

[ronott1]

We finally got an australorp egg yesterday, after two weeks of 0/12.. But we made the awesome discovery, we have two egg breakers! Kinda thinking that's why the guy sold them, as we have not had any issues with this before, and I noticed the the first one trying to get an egg, on her first day being in there. Trying some golf balls.

It may well be the time of year.

Get them free choice calcium and make sure they are getting vitamin D and phosperous. Often egg eating is due to thin egg shells.

normal chicken behaviour:

Hen lays egg
Hen pecks egg to check viability
Egg Breaks from soft shell
Hen and often the flock eats the egg.

To break the cycle, add something hard like the golf balls that you are adding and figure out why the egg shells are soft. Sometimes it is worms or mites or lice too.

 

[gilcamp4]

i keep my egg shells till i have a whole bowl of them, put them in blender and mix like bread crumbs then mix with feed at lest twice a week plus dh puts shells in tray, they have never eat one egg even soft ones, we don't get to many soft but it dose happen, we have had chickens off and on for 35 years, right now we have 43

 

[ProjectChick]

I still am eggless.

But we have golf balls in the nest boxes and I have noticed Mr. Cogburn pecking at them. Should I be worried that some day, if I am ever to receive such a thing as a egg, that he is going to steal them?

 

[mortie]

Exploratory pecks are normal. No need to cause yourself more anxiety by worrying about a problem you don't have yet. Trust me, I am the queen of worrying about stupid stuff. Ask these people how many times I thought I had fried my chicks in their eggs when I was incubating them.

 

[mortie]

You guys are killing me! Sooooo....

 

[mortie]

YAY!!!! 17,000 posts!