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One of my hens has started pecking and eating eggs. Short of staking out the coop are there any good ways to identify which hen is the egg eater. There are 29 birds in the flock.
Also, other than the stock pot is there a way of breaking a bird of this habit?
Andy,
I don't know squat about raising chickens but here is a link that I found which might be of interest to you.
Hope this helps.
Whenever I have a broken egg, or extra eggshells, I always throw them in the coop. It always seems strange to me how much the hens *love* to eat the eggs I give them, and yet I had never had one go in the nesting boxes and crack one open. ...guess it does happen though as you can attest to.
My only suggestion would be to give them all a cholestrol test and see which one fails [img]/forums/images/icons/blush.gif[/img] .
(Sorry, couldn't resist.. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] )
Some hens will eat the eggshell to supplement their calcium. They may need some oyster shell in their feed to increase their calcium... Another thing to look at is the thickness of their eggshell.
Are their waddles red or pale? If they are pale, then you may need to give them something for worms like eprinex or wazine.
If it is a behavior problem, then you may need to find some tricks to make the eggs undesirable.
Good luck,
Joe
Their waddles are red and they appear to be healthy. I think it might be a behavior problem. For now I'm collecting the eggs twice a day to reduce the opportunity for the bad hen to eat the eggs, but I'd like to go back to once a day collection if I can cure the hen of this problem.
Thanks for the suggestion on the calcium, I'll try it.
Someone once told me to try filling an egg with a mixture of tobasco and mustard. They may not want to eat another egg after that.
Joe
We've not found any easy way to identify the culprit, just a matter of elimination. You might try the extra oyster shell and throw some fake egss in the nest. If the hens figure they can't bust the eggs open, they will usually give up. Marble and glass eggs work best because they are too heavy for the hens to pitch out. We've also used golf balls.
Steve
Giving the chickens eggshells is a good thing to do, but make sure you crush 'em up pretty well. If they still look like eggs the culprit may just figure that the tasty eggshells are an invitation to raid more eggs.