This morning Holly (our not quite year old white legbar) laid a thin shelled eggs in the rollaway nestbox. I found the contents & half the shell, which I cleaned away.
This afternoon I found half of a perfectly formed eggshell from Tufty (cream legbar, never slow where food's involved) on the floor of the run, empty. She never normally lays anywhere other than the nestbox, so clearly she's taken a matter of hours to work out that it's much easier to eat an egg if it's not laid in a rollaway nestbox but outside on the floor instead.
I filled the remains of the shell with English mustard, which she couldn't get her beak into fast enough when she saw the yellow contents. She then spent several minutes wiping her beak clean on the floor, so I can only hope that she's learned her lesson.
I'd be gutted to have to cull any of the youngsters, but I can't have a habit like that getting established.
Here's hoping it doesn't happen again. I've never seen a pullet progress so quickly from finding one thin shelled broken egg to eating thick shelled ones
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