Isolate Your Problem Chickens in a Chicken Ark
A frequent problem when young hens begin laying is they start to eat the eggs. It can be possible to retrain them but some chickens are more difficult to retrain than others.
Chickens will eat an egg for the first time when it’s been dropped, stepped upon and broken, or some other accident. Hens forage, so are always interested in something new. They may eat the shell, or not. It can be difficult to stop once they’ve developed a taste for egg.
Things to stop egg eating starting.
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. Chickens need sufficient space to move around in their nestboxes without damaging the eggs.
Next, make sure there is a good supply of bedding material in the nest boxes to protect the eggs from being moved around.
Finally, an egg is easier to break if the shell is thin. 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.
Ideas for solutions when your chickens are already eating eggs
Pick them up frequently. If the egg is left, the more likely it is to 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.
More ideas
You could try putting golf balls in the nesting boxes. This works as the chickens will be put off after pecking the hard ball.
Wooden eggs look more like the real think, so make work too.
Another thing to try is to remove an egg and heavily coat it with petroleum jelly and then replace it. When the hen pecks at it, she gets a beak full of goop.
Boredom can be as much a cause of egg pecking as it is of pecking other chickens. 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 tell if it’s one hen that is eating eggs, and take her away from the rest, before her example spreads.
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.
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