Hen Chronicles: Developing a taste for (their own) eggs

Are our three hens about to become cannibals?

During our four months of chicken ownership, Nala, Stella, and Snow have never eaten any of the two to three eggs they lay daily.

Until last Thursday.

When I went out to feed the girls that morning, I found an intact egg on the ground at the front of the pen, some six feet from the coop, where the hens normally lay their eggs in a nest box.

The only opening into the pen is a wooden lid at the back, where the pen abuts the coop. So there was no way to reach into the pen to retrieve the egg by hand, because it was too far away from that access point.

Grabbing a stick, I poked it through the wire enclosure with the idea of slowly rolling the egg toward the opening, so I could then grab the egg. Of course, the stick smashed the egg almost immediately. That's when all three hens raced to the scene of the crime, where they hungrily gobbled up the evidence.

Will the hens now add a new menu item to their diet, thereby destroying our egg supply? The egg in question sat, unmolested, in the pen until I accidentally broke it, so maybe the girls will ignore their own delicacies so long as they remain in the shell. Or will they take matters into their own beaks and start breaking into freshly laid eggs with impunity?

Here’s hoping that does not prove to be the case, but there are grounds for concern. “Once chickens find out how good eggs taste, they break them on purpose to eat them,” according to The Chicken Encyclopedia.

Maybe the girls didn’t get enough of a taste to turn them into egg-chomping fiends. They behaved themselves on Friday and Saturday, but as with so many of life’s questions, only time will provide a long-term answer. I just hope they don't start ordering up eggs Benedict.