Are Your Chickens Eating Eggs? Try Using a Chicken Ark
Layers when they first begin laying may start to eat the eggs. You may be able to retrain them, but some chickens can be hard to cure.
When an egg has been dropped or trodden on, a chicken may eat it. Hens forage, so are always interested in something new. Sometimes they’ll eat the shell, other times they’ll leave it. But once they’ve tasted an egg, it can be hard habit to break.
Preventative measures.
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. Your nestboxes should have enough room for the chicken to step around without damaging the eggs.
Thick bedding in the nestboxes will cushio the eggs.
If shells are thin, eggs are more easily broken. 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
Collect often. The longer an egg sits, the more likely it will get eaten.
Your hens may all lay at the same time, so collect the eggs as soon as they’ve finished. If they lay throughout the day, check more frequently during the day for a while.
This may break the cycle and you can also keep them in a chicken ark.
Other solutions
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 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. Letting them free range or putting them in a chicken ark can work
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.
