Such a frustrating problem! Once a chicken begins eating eggs, it’s a difficult behavior to break. It usually starts innocent enough. An egg accidentally gets broken and a curious chicken gives it a try and finds that it has discovered a delicious new source of food. It soon learns that as eggs are laid, a couple of pecks is all it takes to reach that delicious center!
A persistent chicken will leave you with messy, sticky egg boxes and an empty egg basket.
It’s not just the taste factor that draws a chicken to eat broken eggs, there is also an instinctual factor that drives a chicken to this habit. In the wild, a broken egg would smell, drawing predators to the odor and to a hen’s clutch of eggs. The hen eats the egg to “hide the evidence” so to speak. It also happens to be a nutritionally perfect food for a chicken; full of protein and calcium.
The Causes:
Not enough protein in the diet- Chickens need a complete protein in their diet.
Calcium deficiency- oyster shell provides a great source of calcium.
Territorial broodiness- we’ve had territorial hens break other chickens eggs
Accidental egg break- provide soft bedding in the egg boxes and use an egg basket to safely carry eggs back to the house.
Not enough space in the coop- make sure your chickens have enough room so that they’re not using the egg laying space as part of their day-today living quarters.
If you feed excess eggs back to your chickens they should be cooked or mixed with other food items so that they no longer resemble a raw egg.
Same goes for the shell. If you feed your chickens eggshells to increase calcium in their diet, make sure the shells are dried of liquid white and yolk and crushed enough to make them notably different from an egg shell in the coop. You don’t want the chicken to identify the shells and recognize them as something they’d find in an egg box.
Prevention:
Collect eggs at least once a day this will prevent them from piling up and getting stepped on.
If you accidentally drop an egg and it cracks, pick it up immediately, shoo chickens away from trying to gobble up the egg. Scoop up every last bit of egg and mix the bedding around to hide any trace.
Make sure your chickens get a rich diet with correctly balanced proteins. Too much scratch grain (an incomplete protein) can encourage egg eating, feather plucking and in extreme cases cannibalism.
The Cure:
Separate the hen from the rest of the flock. This way she’ll only have her own eggs to eat.
Check her several times a day and if possible try to collect her egg as soon as she lays it. Sometimes this is impossible, but chickens get on a schedule and will lay at relatively the same time each day.
Make sure she’s getting a high protein feed and a calcium supplement.
Sometimes leaving porcelain or wooden eggs in the nest boxes discourages egg breaking because they learn that no matter how hard they peck, they can’t break the egg “shell”
Sometimes it just takes time and diligent egg collection.
If you’re willing to sacrifice eggs until autumn, many times over the winter break they forget the habit and it doesn’t resume the following spring.
Have you ever had a hen with an egg eating problem? How did you cure it? Share your tips by leaving a comment below, or visit the Community Chickens Facebook Page.
25 Comments
Roll out nesting boxes. You can simply build a nest box with a sloped floor so the egg can roll out onto a bit of bedding in an outside the box tray where the hens are not allowed to go. Many are used without bedding except for the egg catcher portion, or with firm mats that permit the egg to roll.
Faux eggs and pepper and the rest of it do not work when Biddy and her sisters have gotten into egg eating.
Does anyone have a simple set of plans for one of these homemade roll out nesting boxes? I am not very mechanically inclined but this egg eating situation is about to come to a head! I will be investing in some ceramic eggs and cabbage – maybe even some wasabi, too but I am rapidly running out of patience.
Egg eaters, something that happens, but very simple to cure. Myself, I’ve never had an issue in over 30 years of keeping chickens. Keep in mind, roosters can be egg eaters too! Malicious eating of eggs is different than one being broken in the nest. A broken egg in the nest is a free for all buffet of hen chasing hen to devour a nutrient rich treat. It’s simle to determine the culprit of malicious egg eating. An thorough inspection of the nostrils will give you the renegade. The openings will be crusted with dry egg. Often you can see it crusted in the feathers and if you’re lucky, you find them wet from the freshly devoured egg. Knowing your hens and closely inspecting them daily is the best way to know if any issues exist.
The cure, a head of cabbage. Malicious egg eating is due to mineral deficiencies. You are probably thinking, but I feed a quality feed and the girls get free range time. It happens! Chickens are like people, they all have different taste and process things differently, but I assure you, a head of cabbage is the cure. Simply pull a few of the outer leaves off if using store bought cabbage. Cut the stalk end off about a half inch to freshen it up. If your pen is clean you can lay it in a corner, or you can bend/straighten out a metal cost hanger, poke it through the head a few inches from the stem end, hanging it in your coup. I’ve cured many flocks of others from steeling eggs. Over the years, I’ve witnessed a single hen eat a whole head of cabbage in a day. This is beneficial to for the entire flock! It’s a great source of vitamins and minerals and you’ll actually notice an increase in egg production. I feed cabbage year round as a treat. Try it and you’ll see happier, healthier hens. I guarantee it!
An old timer once told me to blow the white & yolk out if an egg, and replace it with mustard, apparently chickens hate mustard?
The chicken will soon learn not to break & eat the eggs.
Never tried this myself yet, but if I start getting egg eaters will definitely give it a try.
I’ve been through this problem over and over. Each time I have to be diligent in collecting the eggs ASAP, even to the point of shooing chickens off the nest until my egg breaker gives up. Free ranging the chickens helps too- letting them out and stay out all day (they wander in to lay and go out again, because roaming in Mom’s garden is way too much fun!) And as for broken beak comment- I have a broken beak chicken- as long as she can eat ok, leave her be.
Build or buy a roll out nest. Or as I did build a roll out cage. With the cage you can put your problem birds in the cage and the eggs roll out before they can eat them. If you build an off the ground cage you can increase or decrease with a block to raise the floor in the direction you need to go to get the correct slope. It only requires a small amount to roll the egg and not crack them. Also be sure you tray that the eggs roll into is long enough for the eggs to roll out of reach of a determined bird.
I have changed the egg eating habit on two occasions. Let me first say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I agree with this excellent article, but when all else fails, I used a mixture of the egg itself laced with, wait for it, lol, wasabi yep sushi heat, lol they try it shake their head and move on. Just a pinch will do. Good Luck and thank you to all the new chicken folks trying to raise their own hens. You are all great Americans.
I’ve had some success using a couple of golf balls in each nest and a friend used some wooden eggs he obtained at a craft and hobby store. Both slowed the eating and over the winter they forgot-still use golf balls.
The surefire cure for an egg eater is the stew pot.
If you have a reasonably sized flock, sending the egg eating bird to freezer camp/the hot tub, gives 100% success rate in ending the egg eating.
No really!
Roll out nest boxes both prevent and cure the problem. They can be homebuilt.
I have had this problem twice and putting a marble egg in the nesting box has worked both times within a few days.
If you fence in the coop, you can put netting over the top. We do, and have no predator issues.
We buried our fencing 12″ and added gravel and pieces of chicken wire in that mixture. Nothing can dig under without getting their paws cut up.
No one addresses the issue of how to find out which hen is eating the eggs! I cannot sit in the coop and watch. I never see it happen, and have tried all the suggestions: fake eggs, more protein, then more calcium, going out several times a day yo collect eggs, it is still one or two eggs per day!
Help!
I have ravens after my eggs. They wait for the hens to start “bragging” and then help themselves. I have tried reducing the entryway. They walk in. I have waited with my shotgun, but they must have experience with guns. One waits on the utility pole outside the coop and when it sees me coming it warns the nestbox robber inside the coop. I have tried a live trap with no luck. Caught a skunk. Any suggestions?
You could try a fake owl on top of the coop.
You could try a fake owl on top of the coop.
Always check to see if rats, skunks, jays, crows, ravens, etc. are performing the vanishing egg trick. One lady here in the SF Bay Area was of the opinion that *all* of her hens were going to have to be replaced – until she spotted the Jay happily moving an egg.
Fake owls don’t seem to persuade ravens. They don’t seem to deter many nuisance birds and I’ve seen pigeons build a nest on one. Since many owls are nocturnal, the presence of an owl in broad daylight tends to be ineffective.
Broken beak – I have noticed I have a chick with a crooked beak. Bottom part is straight, the top part leads sharply to the right. Should I try to correct it somehow?
Lee Pearce, cross beak chickens are all too common. Do try to correct it. Just make certain your feeder is situated so that she can scoop her food into her mouth. This is usually accomplished by elevating the feed to the height of the chickens back.
For a cross beak, crumbles are better than pellets.
Good luck.
Whoops! DO NOT try to correct it. (I should have proof read that!)
and…the height of the chicken’s back. (Where are my editing manners?)
As long as the chicken is eating well then it should be fine to leave it alone. Trying to correct the beak may cause more harm than good.
I sand them to the butcher and getting some new ones ..
We’ve had good luck with mustard eggs. Blow out an egg and fill it with mjstard then leave it in the nest for the egg eater to find. Also helps to identify who was the culprit.
We had an egg breaking chicken, and the problem kept getting worse. We didn’t know which one of our chickens was eating the eggs. We tried filling an egg with mustard and collecting the eggs quickly, but the only thing that really worked was buying a nesting box with a rollaway feature. As soon as the hen stands up from laying the egg, it rolls down a slope and into a box out of the hen’s reach. That was expensive, but it stopped the problem completely.