yolk all over outside of freshly laid egg ?

[giasmom]

Went do the hen house to do some house cleaning earlier, saw several eggs & one hen on her nest.Went to go get my egg basket, came back & 1 off the eggs I had just seen is now covered in YOLK. This happened in less than the 3 minutes I was gone. No egg shells any where, no yolk on any of the hens beaks, so what happened ? Any ideas ? Oh yeah there was another hen in the hen house but not on a nest, if that matters.

 

[MissPrissy]

Sounds like someone ate an egg. Check some beaks. You should see yolk on it unless she pulled the wipe the beak on the bedding trick.

 

[giasmom]

That was the first thing I did ! Who ever it was, cleaned up really quick! This is the first time this has happened , why would this happen ? Is ther something I need to do to keep it from happening again ?

Thank You so much MissPrissy.

 

[MissPrissy]

Eggs are delicious. Onc they figure that out it is hard to break. Maybe the egg was cracked and someone cleaned up the mess? Then again maybe someone is an egg eater. Not good. What are they eating? They may be looking for protein. You can give them a little meat scraps from your kitchen. You can also give them a little kitty kibble to raise the protein source - not too much but toss a little out like scratch for them to squabble over and hunt and peck. My extra roosters love a little handful of dry cat food.

 

[giasmom]

They eat layer feed,scratch,oyster shells, pasta noodles, some scraps but I have never thought about giving them meat. I will try the meat & kitty food thing to see how that works. I wouldn't have thought that someone could have broken & eaten an egg that quick ! Thanks Again !

 

[giasmom]

Oh yeah, Congrats on the 20,000 !!!!!!!!!

 

[HidingInTheHenHouse]

If your hens are still young to laying, then it could also have been that someone laid a shell-less egg. I've had that happen a few times, but usually those get laid from a roost, not in the nest box. I will just find an egg on my shelf roost that looks just like someone had cracked it open there. No shell, no membrane. Yolk and white intact. None of the chickens eat these for some reason. I guess I've been lucky so far.