[Glaswegian]

hi all.
do hens eat their own eggs? i have four rir's and a light sussex cockerel. recently we have discovered,on different occasions broken eggs in the henhouse. i found another yesterday and when i picked it from the nest box and threw it outside,one of the hens came running from the house and started to eat it.
is this normal behaviour or is there something wrong

                                           regards.johnie.

[Rosemary]

Hens do sometimes eat eggs - they know how nutritious they are. It's a bad habit and hard to cure, so don't give them eggs.

Are the eggs pecked or smashed?

Depending on the design of your henhouse, it could be crows or magpies. We were getting broken eggs last year - quite clearly holes pecked in them. Dan set up the camera in the henhpuse and caugh a magpie on film - came into the house, checked each nest box in turn. We rigged up a tunnel / chicane that the hens would negotiate but not the magpies. They can't get into the arks because of the design.

If you don't have many nestboxes and / or don't lift the eggs frequently enough, they sometimes just get stood on and broken, which is a different problem with a different solution.

Hope thsi helps.

[spitfire]

we had a hen that developed the habit of eating eggs- managed to eat her way through a whole clutch given half the chance and would attack you if you went to remove them before she had a chance to peck them.
we changed the diet (they are free range so plenty of vairety in the diet) and tried to be there as hens were laying- the breaking point came when she chased the broody hen out of the coop and was pecking at her eggs-  needless to say- we could not break her of the habit so before any of the other chickens developed it, we dealt with the problem and removed her from the flock.

would love to know any other way round the problem though- (screening the nest boxes didn't work) just in asem it happens again- don't have a large number of chickens and its a loss to lose a good layer becasue of a bad habit!

[plumseverywhere]

my buff sussex was an egg eater until we put some false eggs into the nest boxes - she bashed her beak a few times and now doesn't even bother!
if you keep the nest area very dark it can help as it means they cant' see so clearly wehre the eggs are.
I've also been told to try injecting mustard into an egg - unfortunately that didnt' work iwth our 'chicken korma' as she loved the taste 

[Glaswegian]

hi folks and thanks for your advice.
i think it would be hard to identify the culprit as hens lay at different times of the day. could possibly be magpies as we are well out in the countryside with plenty of trees in the area.

[spitfire]

I know, tricky one! it took us weeks to identify her- we had 2 legbars that were identical so had to mark one to differentiate it from the other- the things you end up doing!! should be a warning sign up around our place
'danger-great detectives at work'
will try the false egg trick though should it occur again- thanks plumseverywhere.
and good luck Glaswegian- a process of elimination normally points to the obvious culprit- hope it turns out to be magpies though- a scarecrow is an easy fix!
Lynne