How to get your chickens to STOP eating their eggs.

Oh Chickens! Give me a mammal over you girls any day. Over the years we have had a number of different challenges with our chickens. Starting with them being eaten by a variety of predators, our dog now takes care of that job. Last spring I posted pictures of our twelve little heritage chicks which I wanted to raise into a small flock with just enough eggs for our family. Seven of which turned out to be Roosters or slow oven roasters.

 In January I realized my little flock of pullets where eating there own eggs. Everyone told me ,just kill them, I had such a little flock, but I was determined to try. Special thanks to Robyn and Sarah for their input. Here's what I found out.

 Chicken Detetive-

1. Find the out who's doing it! Blow out an egg and fill it with blue food colouring. Sealing one end with melted wax, something I didn't do and ended up with a week of smurf hands. This way the blue dye will out whoever is doing it. In my case guilty all around. 

2. Try hot sauce in an blown egg, this may deter them from doing it again.

3. Some chickens like hot sauce, try Djion Mustard. Both of these didn't work for me, but I have had them work in the past.

4. Make sure it isn't rats or other predators. 

Try this-

1. Make sure your chickens have enough protein. 

2. Eliminate Boredom, I moved mine from the chicken tractor to a larger pen.

 3. Collect Eggs several times a morning, if possible. 

4. Make sure they have shell in a separate bowl from their food. High or low levels of oyster shell may have them eating their own shell. 4. Try giving them Vitamin D. I did this by pouring 1/2 tsp of cod liver oil over their scratch once a day. I saw my first few uneaten eggs in about three days. 

6. Trim back about 1/8 inch off the end of the beaks or file. This is NOT the same thing as debeaking, the trimmed tip of the beak grows back in about two weeks. This made the biggest change to our own chickens and we started to get those four to five eggs a day.

7. We also order "chicken glasses" which I was hoping to only use for a few weeks or until we broke the habit. I know you all where looking forward to an video, but I just don't have the heart to glass our chickens while they are being so well behaved.  

We ordered these glasses online $4 for 50 pairs. It was during a night of online searching, one up from stewing them. 

  As crazy as chickens are I know we all feel this way about them.