Chicken breaks its own eggs

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Chicken breaks its own eggs

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roger
Guest

Posted: Tue Jul 26, 05 7:21 pm Post subject: Chicken breaks its own eggs
My daughter put an egg into the chickens coup a few weeks ago for a prank. However, one of them pecked it to bits. They have just started laying their own and are cracking them. Has anyone ever heard about this sort of behavhiour before ? If so how can we stop it ?

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Tue Jul 26, 05 7:34 pm Post subject:

Chickens can get a taste for eggs and if ours break one they quickly eat it. Some say it cannot be cured and suggest eating the offending hen.

However, as with one of our hens, she is prone to laying soft shelled eggs that are easily broken. We ensure she mostly eats layers rations which include calcium and we also help her by giving her small snails and a little yoghurt or milk. This makes her lay tougher shelled eggs that don't get broken and the hens don't seem to break them on purpose.

Also, if possible, try and collect them ASAP and ensure the nest box has a decent layer of soft material in it such as wood shavings.

dave d

Joined: 03 Jul 2005
Posts: 52
Location: somerset

Posted: Tue Jul 26, 05 7:36 pm Post subject:
hi roger the only way you can stop this is to find out the culprit then seperate her almost like seperate 1 hen at a time untill you find out the hen doing it and the keep her seperate i once read that an egg eater always does this and you should kill her but i think this is a bit drastic hope this helps

Gertie

Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Posts: 1638
Location: Yorkshire

Posted: Thu Jul 28, 05 12:53 pm Post subject:
Our hens started to do this - have not done it since we tried the old mustard egg trick - basically we filled a blown egg shell with mustard paste - they obviously didn't like it. Hope this works for you. I also try to keep temptation out of their way by taking eggs off out of the nest box asap - ours are normally laid early in the morning.

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