Woo Hoo!!! My first egg!! Oh wait... Dangit!!

[LynneP]

Hold on, don't cook her yet! Is she getting enough calcium (oyster shell) ? Is it in the layer feed or available when she wants it?

 

[ashyannehand]

Oh NO!

I hope you get things worked out with her. Good luck!

 

[bwebb7]

could you put her in one of those cages that is tilted so the egg rolls away as soon as she lays it?
A girl I grew up with had chix and hers were kept in 18"x18" cages that were suspended from the barn roof and had a tray in front where the eggs rolled down into-they really couldnt get to them

 

[redhead83402]

we had a hen that thought it might be a good idea to eat her eggs ~ at first I thought ~ stew pot! But then, we got out the golf balls, painted two brown, ( lighter & darker) & left one white. Now, the stinker cautiously pecks the top, but doesn't eat them ~ I consider it progress.

Funny side note however ~ since we have hens who lay both lighter & darker brown eggs & one who lays white, ( and we have 3 nesting boxes) we put them each in a different box. Now we are getting all the darker brown eggs in the box with the darker golfball, & lighter brown eggs in the box with the lighter brown golfball... and the leghorn just drops her eggs in any old box, could care less. :-D
~Red

 

[rebecca10782]

That's really disturbing

I think she might need some counceling

 

[Henrietta23]

I watched a silkie do this recently at one of our CT gatherings. I was right there and able to see that the egg had no shell. When the chicken checked out the egg (I believe her first) the membrane ruptured and she began to eat it. Were you close enough to see that the egg had a hard shell or could something similar have happened? I'm hoping so anyway. I've had egg eaters and it's awful!

 

[cmom]

A possible egg eater, not good. I wonder too if she is getting enough calcium. I put golf balls in my nests.

 

[SillyChick]

Uh oh, she might be an egg eater!

Funny post, though!

It is a form of cannibalism among chickens, when they taste an egg and like it - egg eating time!

This habit can be difficult to break, but putting wooden or golf balls as eggs in the nest box will help. They will peck at the fake eggs and will have stiff necks doing so and will grow tired of it. I also read that someone injected a hot cocktail of tobasco sauce in an egg and the egg-eater burned his head and got crazy, but his habit is broken. Not sure if it is safe, though.

Good luck and congratulations!

 

[pattycake]

For a while my chickens were eating an egg or two a day. I did a few things to stop them: started feeding black oil sunflower seeds as a treat (more protein), put carpet pads in their nest boxes to soften the lay (chickens will eat a cracked egg before it eats an uncracked one), and went back to freeranging (in the winter they didn't like to go out in the snow).

It's been months since anyone ate an egg in my henhouse. Today there was even a broken, soft-shell egg in there and no one touched it.

I would keep your barred rock cooped up for a few weeks with a nest. I bet if she got used to laying in a nest, she'd get out of the habit of eating it.