The Great Egg Mystery

Back in December, we were preparing for the eventual drop in egg production due to winter fast approaching. We expected egg counts to dwindle down gradually, as we were bringing in 6 to 9 a day.

But suddenly, unexpectedly, we were getting none. Absolutely none!

I was boggled that the ladies had made a concerted effort to stop laying completely on the same day, but hey, you cannot question the hormonal nature of a woman.


For the heck of it, I grabbed an egg from inside and laid it in their nesting box. Maybe they would see it and have a sudden change of heart, perhaps an instinctual urge to lay again?

Lots of the farming that goes on here is trial and error, you know.

Later that day I went out to the coop to check on the flock.

The egg I had laid in the nesting box was gone.

I ran through my head of possible scenarios of how an egg had disappeared from a coop in a matter of hours. Had Tad seen the egg and brought it into the house? Did I? Had I even put the egg there in the first place? Confusion ensued.

Embracing my detective skills, I entered the coop and began digging around in the nesting boxes. To my surprise, I found a smattering of egg shells buried underneath some straw. As a grabbed some of the bits of shell, I was swarmed by ladies and gentlemen alike, who plucked the shells from my hand with an appetite I had never seen before.


My chickens had turned into cannibals.

Distraught, I did some research and found that apparently this was a common thing. Who would have thought.

I tried two different tactics to try and stop the madness:

1. I placed a round stone in their nesting boxes, which they would apparently try to eat and find that they couldn't, and this would somehow break the cannibalism spell.
2. I started venturing out to the coop every hour to bring in any eggs I could find before those vicious beaked creatures could devour them.

These two things seemed to help, but we were still harvesting considerably less eggs than before this outbreak began.

Finally, winter rolled around and the ladies actually stopped laying.

And now that the days are getting longer, I am happy to say that we are getting eggs every day and without any instance of weird bird cannibalism. Either my tactics prevailed, or the egg-drought of winter was long enough that they forgot about their taste for egg-flesh.


Who knows. Crazy birds.