First Coast Pet

Posts Tagged ‘chickens eating eggs’

Layers when they first begin laying may start to eat the eggs. You may be able to retrain them, but some chickens can be hard to cure.

An accident such as an egg being dropped or stepped on will often trigger chickens eating eggs. They are curious foragers so can’t resist this new treat. They may eat the shell, or not. But once they’ve tasted an egg, it can be hard habit to break.

Preventative measures.

Make sure your nest boxes in your chicken ark or hen house have a lip on the bottom of the front so it’s hard to kick eggs out accidentally. Chickens need sufficient space to move around in their nestboxes without damaging the eggs.

A good depth of bedding in the nestboxes will protect them.

Finally, eggs get broken more often when the shells are thinner. Adequate oyster shell will help develop harder and thicker shells.

If the chickens can roam free so they have more interest, or you have a chicken ark you can move around, they will have more interest and are less likely to get bored.

Things you can do with chickens who have started to eat eggs

Collect often. If the egg is left, the more likely it is to get eaten.
Your hens may all lay at the same time, so collect the eggs as soon as they’ve finished. Keep checking during the day if your chickens lay over the course of the day.

This can stop the habit, and it’s worth trying keeping them apart in a chicken ark.

Other things you can try

You could try putting golf balls in the nesting boxes. The theory is that a few pecks on a hard ball will discourage them, so they’ll lose interest and leave the eggs alone.

Wooden eggs look more like the real think, so make work too.

Another thing to try is to remove an egg and heavily coat it with petroleum jelly and then replace it. When the hen pecks at it, she gets a beak full of goop.

Sometimes chickens will start pecking at the eggs out of boredom in the same way they start pecking at each other. Letting them free range or putting them in a chicken ark can work

If you can work out if it’s one chicken who’s causing the problem before she teaches this bad habit to the others, separate her from the rest of the flock and their eggs.

This is where a chicken ark can be useful, so you can house her separately for a while. She will have interest from being moved around regularly, and if you collect the eggs frequently as well, you may break her of the habit.