We bring you sad news on our saga to break the egg-eater
habit. Our ladies had discovered how yummy their eggs are. They have now developed
into egg eaters. If we are vigilant with multiple checks throughout the day of
their nesting box, we are lucky to find 3 eggs from our 48 egg layers, but most
days we are down to 0. We have checked with all our resources on how to break
the habit. They have an abundance of calcium in their feed. We filled empty egg
shells with mustard but they eat
it gone – shell and all. We put golf balls in their nest so to learn it hurts
to attempt to break it. We invested in a $300 nesting box that rolls away the
egg as they lay them (which we catch our smart girls walking back and forth and
craning their necks to reach the goods).
As a last recourse, with heavy hearts we even snipped the
ends of the beaks of those we caught with mustard on their face to attempt to
detour them. We even separated those that we have caught
from the others to see if we would have eggs at the end of the day but we are
afraid that the hens have modeled this bad behavior and it is now learned by
all of them.
Our options now are to either run a petting zoo of eggs
eaters or to cull the clan and start fresh with a new flock.
We will take on the deed next week and will plan when best
to order new chicks. What it does mean is
no more eggs this year. We are so very sad to share with you this news.
s 