Puppy Care

Sometimes when young pullets are just beginning to lay, they start eating the eggs. You may be able to retrain them, but some chickens can be hard to cure.

Chickens can often eat eggs for the first time when they’ve have been damaged – such as being troddne on or dropped. They are inquisitve so this looks like soemthing new to try. They may eat the shell, or not. It can be difficult to stop once they’ve developed a taste for egg.

Preventative methods.

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. Nestboxes should be large enough for the chicken to move around easily without stepping on the eggs.

Thick bedding in the nestboxes will cushio the eggs.

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. The longer an egg sits, the more likely it will get eaten.
Collect them as soon as the hens are finished if they lay at the same time. For a time, check throughout the day, if your chickens lay all day.

This may break the cycle and you can also keep them in a chicken ark.

What to try if this doesn’t work

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 may be more convincing for the chickens – but it’s the same principle.

You could try heavily coating one egg with Vaseline. 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. So giving them more interest in their run, letting them range free or putting them in a portable chicken ark can all be possible solutions

You may be able to identify one chicken who is the culprit and separate her before she teaches the others.

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.