I think we have an egg eater!
Today has been filled with joy around the homestead! As we celebrate Christmas together we can't forget our animals. Early this morning I went out to let the birds out and check for eggs....crap, we forgot to collect eggs yesterday
No worries I've got this
I opened the lid of the laying box, and to my surprise there was a large amount of eggs. Unfortunately, with the weather being so cold, several had frozen and cracked. This is terrible. We view eggs as a provisioin here on the homestead. This is a great source of food for my egg lovin' wife, and any neighbor that wanders by. I wasn't pleased about losing them, and now I had to clean them out.
I reached in to start clearing them out and there she was A BIG OL' CUCKOO MARAN HELPING HERSELF TO SOME SCRAMBLED EGG FOR BREAKFAST
I quickly got her out of the box and started removing more eggs and putting them in the burn barrel. Each time I went back THERE SHE WAS and I kept removing her. I caught her one time eating what I thought was a busted egg, but it could have been an egg without a shell.
So now I am thinking to myself of what may have happened. Did we accidently leave them in there...they froze...they broke..she ate them...now we have a chicken that likes her food very over easy?
Or did we have a chicken that layed an egg without a shell...and beyond our control we had a bird start to eat it...now we have a beautiful bird that prefers her food sunny side up?
As for now
As for now we have to wait and see. I hope this was a one time thing. Perhaps she was taking a short walk on the wild side, tasted the forbidden fruit and now has given up her dark ways. 🙃
We had a farm a few years ago. We had all kinds of animals. We had chickens and It was so much fun for us to get the eggs! Sometimes we had too many and didn't eat them fast enough! I think we fed them the other animals lol.
Yeah, I mostly have the chickens for bug control. We have plenty if bugs! I hate wasting eggs.
I just went out to collect eggs about 20 minutes ago, and I accidentally dropped two eggs. It was like watching piranhas on a side of beef. It happens, but I haven’t had a major problem yet.
Yeah, if we drop some the dogs usually get it. I hope we don't develop an issue.
if she develops a taste for it, say goodbye to your breakfast.
Too right! Cheers!
Or hello to your dinner, if you want to look at the glass half full :)
Once you walk over to the wild side... That's it! I am new to this homesteading thing and I only just last weekend heard about some chickens eating eggs! Crazy canibal birds...
Right! Before we had a homestead, I had no idea that they were pretty much garbage disposing meat eaters.
You should see what these buggers eat in India..a bit of a turn off from eating chicken there
Oh no! Do you guys feed shells to your chickens? I know this is common practice, and is good for the strength of the new eggs, but if the shells are not crushed first the chickens will start breaking open the fresh eggs thinking they are for
Yeah, thats what we heard. It is supposed to strengthen the new shells and be good for them in general. We don't feed it back to them because we heard you have to clean them dry them and then crush them...we currently don't have the space.
I’ve always given the broken eggs to my birds. It’s good recycling and what’s more, it’s bird food ... of course they like it. Over the years we had egg eaters that broke the eggs on purpose to eat them but they always stopped when I gave them the following Chicken Conditioner recipe given to me by the person that gave me my first chooks:
Live yogurt
Crushed garlic
Cayenne pepper
Apple cider vinegar.
Choose your own proportions. I never measure mine, but there’s definitely more yogurt than cayenne and there’s plenty of garlic. 😄
We’ve never had to cull an egg eater. That’s a good thing in itself but a great thing if you’ve got to try to find out which hen is doing the eating! No need so far.
I’ve no idea why it works but it has for the past 7 years.
Doesn’t work on blasted crows!
Nice! That is good to know! We have never hsd an egg eater, so this would be the first. Thank you for the recipe. I hate culling the animals. Mostly because we don't eat them.🙃
Hope you never have to cull again!
Me too. Sometimes things happen.its ok.
Sometimes the fox does the job for you.
nice post am also a animal lovers.
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