Posted: 12/10/2014 8:31:06 PM EDT
| I'm losing 3-5 eggs per day (out of six average). This just started this week. Any quick tips to get it stopped? I'm not home during the day to collect the eggs as they are laid. |
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put some golf balls in their nests.
i leave one in each nest. you might want to try a few extra since you have a problem. days you are home check on the eggs often. i have had this problem a few times. i have never had to kill a chicken over it. maybe i have just been lucky. |
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also make sure they have a good amount of bedding in their nests.
i think i have had chickens that learned to peck eggs. from eggs they found broken in the nest or maybe stepped on them and broke them. i also have been told they don't like mustard. so you can drill a hole in an egg and fill it with mustard. never tried it. but it is my back up plan should i run into a stubborn chicken and i can't ID her. |
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Golf balls in the boxes to train them that pecking eggs hurts may help. But ultimately sometimes the only resort is the stew pot... if you plan to replace them in the spring anyways it may not be a bad idea to just do it now...
If you don't know the culprit then get a wireless IP cam, stick it in the coop and set it to record on motion. You may have a lot of video to review but it should accurately ID the culprit... |
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Quoted: Yep, we do the same thing. Never any problems with chickens eating their own eggs. Quoted: Quoted: Our chickens produce about a dozen eggs a day and as we eat them they get every shell back. Yep, we do the same thing. Never any problems with chickens eating their own eggs. |
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How are you reintroducing the shells back to the chickens, ground into their pellet feed or crumbled into the nesting boxes? Quoted:
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Our chickens produce about a dozen eggs a day and as we eat them they get every shell back. Yep, we do the same thing. Never any problems with chickens eating their own eggs. IMHO, NEVER reinforce the "eating" behavior near the nesting boxes. Placing them back in the nesting box will just reinforce the egg-eating behavior. I grind my egg-shells and mix them with the feed. If nothing else it just adds calcium so they aren't deficient and craving the calcium... |
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Quoted: IMHO, NEVER reinforce the "eating" behavior near the nesting boxes. Placing them back in the nesting box will just reinforce the egg-eating behavior. I grind my egg-shells and mix them with the feed. If nothing else it just adds calcium so they aren't deficient and craving the calcium... Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Our chickens produce about a dozen eggs a day and as we eat them they get every shell back. Yep, we do the same thing. Never any problems with chickens eating their own eggs. IMHO, NEVER reinforce the "eating" behavior near the nesting boxes. Placing them back in the nesting box will just reinforce the egg-eating behavior. I grind my egg-shells and mix them with the feed. If nothing else it just adds calcium so they aren't deficient and craving the calcium... Is the primary reason to make crushing the shells easier or is there another purpose to doing it? |
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I'll check their oyster shell but I'm using 20% layer crumbles right now (usually do in the winter) plus scratch and kitchen scraps. This batch is two years old so they will get replaced this spring. Ive had this problem many times off and on through the years. I too feed layer crumbles which is SUPPOSED to have everything they need. I start giving them oyster shell and the problem goes away. |
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Is the primary reason to make crushing the shells easier or is there another purpose to doing it? It's to remove the raw egg taste. Cooking eggs completely alters the taste/texture and it sticks with the idea of not reinforcing habits of eating their own eggs. The chickens won't even associate eating cooked, ground shells with eating eggs... |
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It's to remove the raw egg taste. Cooking eggs completely alters the taste/texture and it sticks with the idea of not reinforcing habits of eating their own eggs. The chickens won't even associate eating cooked, ground shells with eating eggs... Quoted:
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Is the primary reason to make crushing the shells easier or is there another purpose to doing it? It's to remove the raw egg taste. Cooking eggs completely alters the taste/texture and it sticks with the idea of not reinforcing habits of eating their own eggs. The chickens won't even associate eating cooked, ground shells with eating eggs... Some also claim to do it to kill any bacteria or other nasties on the shell. I think it is a bunch of crap thought up by pet chicken keepers, not those who keep them as livestock. I crush the crap out of my shells and they get spread out with the scratch. Never had an egg eater. Egg eaters need to die though. You are not going to change their behavior. |
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Some also claim to do it to kill any bacteria or other nasties on the shell. I think it is a bunch of crap thought up by pet chicken keepers, not those who keep them as livestock. That is the biggest load of crap... chickens poop on the ground, then they scratch the ground and eat things off it... want to talk about "bacteria that might be on the shell" then we better talk about the bacteria that might be on the ground... lol some people just don't have a lick of common sense... 
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Golf balls seemed to do the trick for a couple of days but I'm back down to one or no eggs everyday. I'm not feeding them all winter for that output. When the bag of feed I have is gone, so are they. New chicks in the spring. Hmmm... how many hens do you have, total? Going back to the OP, you say you were losing 3-5 eggs a day, out of an average of six. Did you find broken shells or any other evidence they were actually being eaten? Or were they maybe not laid at all in the first place? Our flock (20+ good layers, several older birds and too damn many roosters) all decided to molt at once, right at the beginning of winter. Molting, the cooler weather and shorter days all caused our egg output to drop to zero for over a month. They are just now starting to ramp back up, and are back up to 4-5 a day now, finally. We don't use lights or anything so our output will probably stay low - I'm hoping we'll get back up to at least 8-10/day - until spring gets here. How old are your birds, and are they/were they molting by any chance? New replacement chicks in spring isn't a bad idea, but you'll be feeding THEM for a long time before you start getting any eggs too. So if there's any way to salvage the existing flock it would probably be worth the time. |
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I have six birds. They will be two years old in March. They molted in September and were up to full production early last month.
I am finding shells fragments and the few eggs that I get are covered in yolk. I have a light on until 10PM so they are getting plenty of that. |
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I have six birds. They will be two years old in March. They molted in September and were up to full production early last month. I am finding shells fragments and the few eggs that I get are covered in yolk. I have a light on until 10PM so they are getting plenty of that. Not that it'll necessarily do anything about the egg eating but everything I've read is if you add artificial light add it in the morning. Chickens should go to sleep with normal darkness. We don't do it anymore but when we used lights for winter production the timer went on at 3 or 4 in the morning. |