To our dismay, Doris, one of our Delaware chickens has developed a taste for eggs. She will eat her own eggs, Dominique eggs, Favorelle eggs, any eggs that cross her path. This is a very bad habit when you love organic eggs and rely on those eggs for a morning, afternoon or evening egg meal.
We have always checked the nesting boxes 2 times a days, but when egg eating is present, checks are required much more often. We both work during the week, so checking for eggs every 2 hours or so is just not an option. And, because chickens are so curious and such followers, egg eating can be contagious. We needed to stop it and stop it soon.
This situation is another first for us, so I did what I do, Googled it. Thankfully, I found lots of others who have traveled this road and were willing to share their experiences and ideas.
With a list of ideas in my head, I was off to solve this problem.
Solution 1: Assess their diets and provide adequate calcium, check. They already had tray of Flock Perfect Oyster Shells. And their feed has an adequate amount of calcium.
Solution 2: Increase protein, check. We had already been providing regular servings of Perfect Flock Chicken Dance Grubs and our home grown sunflower seeds. We have also used FLYGRUBS, another excellent, all natural brand of grubs..
Solution 3: Add stimulation inside winter coop, check. We added extra roosts and providing more scratching and pecking activities with regular servings of organic food scraps in the run.
Solution 4: Hollow out an egg (or 5) and fill it up with mustard which chickens are suppose to hate. Doris did not like these Dijon filled eggs as much, but she sure didn’t hate em', check.
And after a couple of weeks of trying 1 thru 4, the egg eating continued. Urgh!
I am getting tired ya’ll. And frustrated. And truthfully, a little panicky, fearing this could become a bigger problem.
We then decided to take a more drastic measure.
Solution 5: A roll out nesting box.
We purchased this one, HenGear, which is very well constructed and easy to assemble. While roll out nesting boxes in theory are a really great idea, sadly, after couple of weeks of trying to coax them into the box to lay, using all of the strategies suggested, our ladybirds did not accept this new nesting box set up and started laying on the floor of coop.
Ladies, THE FLOOR?! That is the exact place you don’t want eggs to be when Egg Eating Doris is around.
I have no doubt that if we had introduced a roll out style nesting box before our Chicks started laying and that was all they knew, this would be a great long term solution.
Onward, Solution 6: Add curtain/front cover to nesting box.
We have considered this in the past because it is often suggested from many chicken folks, stating chickens like to lay eggs in a private, darkened area and the dark is what keeps them from seeing the eggs inside.
Fun Fact: Chickens cannot see in the dark. You can't eat what you can't see.
Until Doris, our chickens never had any problems laying without nesting boxes being darkened and there was no egg eating.
And, we also re-arranged the winter coop set up, that included moving the nesting boxes to a corner that had the least amount of light through the window.
Curtains attached and chicken approved.
And lookie here....it's Doris, loitering around the nesting boxes, big surprise. Busted, ladybird!
And guess what? It WORKED! And thankfully. Solution 6 it is.
Knock, Knock! Who’s there? Omelette. Omelette who? Omelette smarter than I look!
Needless to say, we now have a Hen Gear Roll Out Nesting Box for sale, very little wear, like new.
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