‘My hens are eating their eggs! How do I stop it?’ is another of those questions we are often asked. Hens egg eating is one of the less pleasant things our feathered ladies can get up to at times and once established, egg-eating can be very difficult to stop. Follow the methods in this article and you will solve the problem of hens eating their eggs.
Preventing Hens from Egg Eating
Prevention is better than cure, it’s easier to stop egg eating before it starts. Remove eggs from the nest box as soon after they’re laid as possible. If there’s no egg to eat then they can’t start.
Also keep the nest box clean. This is good practice anyway. I suspect it often starts when a hen pecks at a spot on an egg, breaks into it and discovers she likes the taste. Clean eggs will not have a target to attract them.
Identify The Egg Eating Culprit
Try and identify which hen it is and if possible, separate her temporarily. The change in the environment (being separated from the flock) often breaks the habit. – Do confirm it is a hen doing eating the eggs, it could be a rat.
Stopping Hens Egg-eating
If egg eating does start then there are a few more tricks we can use to break the habit.
One trick is to blow an egg and put mustard inside to turn them off the idea.
Another method to stop egg eating is to leave a couple of pot eggs or golf balls (white ones) about which they think are real eggs but they aren’t edible. After much pecking at the shell, they give in trying to eat the eggs.
Final Answer to Egg Eating Chickens
If none of the methods above work, consider getting some ‘rollaway’ nest boxes. These are sloped so that as an egg is laid, it rolls backwards and lands in a collection gully which a probing beak can’t reach.
Chicken Questions & Answers
- About Perches or Roosting Bars for Chickens
- Can chickens see colour & can chickens see in the dark?
- Do I need a licence or to register if I keep poultry?
- Hens Egg Eating – My hens are eating their eggs!
- How many eggs will I get from a hen?
- How Much Space do Hens Need
- Keeping Chickens in the Garden
- Keeping Your Chickens Happy & Contented
- My hens have stopped laying eggs, why?
- The Ins and Outs Of Nest Boxes
- Why Keep Chickens? Pros & Cons of Chicken Keeping
