territorial hen????

[ms molly]

Can hens be territorial? We have a hen who is setting and has started eating eggs that are laid in the nesting boxes close to her. We have never had this problem until she started setting. She is without a doubt the guilty hen, she has pieces of egg shell stuck to her beak. Any ideas on how to stop her rude behavior?

 

[CMV]

Egg eating is one of the hardest behaviors to modify once it starts. First increase the protein in her food because she may have a deficiency. I used fake wooden eggs in my nesting boxes when I had problems with chickens pecking at their eggs. A few pecks at the solid wood and they stopped pretty quickly. I have also heard of people using plaster eggs. I will say that mine never graduated to actually eating eggs. I caught them before they actually ate their eggs so the habit was easy to break. Yours will be tougher. There are some nesting box designs that enable a freshly laid egg to roll out of the reach of the chickens to protect the eggs from getting eaten. I don't know anything about those, but I read about them here so a search through the archives may give you some info.
Good luck.