South-eastern Independent. (McConnelsville, Ohio) 1871-1871, 1871-06-30
Hens Eating their Eggs.

IT is a common error to suppose that
some deficiency of diet causes this vice.
The appetite for animal food cannot be so
satiated that a nice fresh egg will not taste
good as o as hunger begins to return.
The habit of ~egg-eating is first acquired
by fowls devouring a thin-shelled or shell
less egg, and then trying to repeat the
delicate fare by pecking at those with
thick shells, or by some accident an egg
may be broken, and thus afford the first
lesson. 1t frequently happens that hens
when shut up and driven to straits for &C.
cupatiOn, will scratch among the straw or
other litter of their nests, and thus break
eggs, and so get a taste. When one learns
to break them on purpose, the rest soon
initiate. If hens mast be kept in close
confinement, make the nests in covered
boxes, with a low, dark, covered passage
way a few feet long leading to them which
is lighted only by an aperture at the end
just large enough for a fowl to enter. The
consequence will be that while the birds
will readily enter to lay, and even prefer.
a dark place for that purpose, you may be
sure they will not go there on mischief or
spend their time rummaging among the
straw. This is a preventive, and also
generally a cure, for even a hen that is so
far demOralized as to eat her own eggs as
o o as laid will no often do il in a dark
corner. But the best preventive is a free
range for fowls, in which case egg-eating
as well as plucking and devouriDg feathers,
is rarely or never acquired, because fowls
find plenty to do that is legitimate without
following abnormal practices, and if one
does learn evil the rest are not huddled
close by to watch every motion and learn
also. 1t has been suggested that the
nest-eggs of some hard material
be placed where egg-eating hens
may peck at them unavailingly until
wearied, and thus be diverted from their
bad habit, but we have repeatedly seen
fowls ruined by this vice in places where
artificial eggs were always kept. Another
recommended cure is to remove the con-
tents of an egg-shell, fill it with ground
cayenne with a little paste added, when
the fowls will break it, fill their beaks
hurriedly in the strife for possession, and
then run around as if they had been eat
ing Goals of fire. While the smart lasts
they avoid eggs, but will soon relapse.
Sometimes the billssof offenders are burn
ed off with a hot iron until SO blunt that
they cannot break eggs with them. But
in impotence at their m-success they will
sometimes scratch the eggs about, trying
to make an impression upon them in some
way, and thus break them after all. So
the darkened boxes for nests are to be pre-
ferred, and are the only things s~atisfac-
tory, though many fruitless plans, ofwhich
the above are samples, have been devised.
Care should be taken, however, to make
the passage leading to the nests so low
that the fowls a barely stand upright,
and not make them so dark at first that
they cannot find their way, but instead,
commence with a twilight, and after they
wonted, narrow the opening that
admits the light. We devote considerable
space to this item because the trouble is
common, its cause much misunderstood,
and it is quite serious, when, as is some
the case, a whole flock of valuable
fowls are killed as incorrigible.-Hearth
and Home.