Oh yes they can. With ease too. You may need to lop off a few heads to stem the problem.

Hence the expression "to be caught with egg on your face"

Better than having a face on your egg.

Which reminds me: another Ohio nut saw the face of Jebus, this time on a pistachio nut. I really must get my Rock of Jebus as Swaddling Infant out on ebay.

Maybe your chickens can, but mine never have. Nor did my mom's chickens when I was a kid. What kind of birds are you raising!? :eek: :D

Birds that are clumsy and eventually step on a egg cracking it and then decide to taste it. Then decide yum!

How many were you raising?

I think the chances increase with the number of birds. Even my friends who have truly free range chickens, occasionally have this problem.

I dunno.

I started out with 25 birds six years ago. Right now I'm kinda low, with only 15, but I've yet to find an egg that one of the birds broke (either accidentally or on purpose).

They won't even try to eat a shell-less egg. It just sits in the nesting box like a little jelly ball until I come to collect it.

I do give my birds oyster shell calcium and their shells are quite hard - maybe this is the reason the eggs are always intact, but I've never even seen them try to peck into an egg.

Perhaps their big mama just taught them well. :D

Yeah, I don't think it's an epidemic or anything. My friends raise about 2000-3000 a year and maybe they have one or two egg eaters a year. The problem is that when you get one, the others learn from it and then all hell breaks loose.

One of the funny things they told me about the rooster is that he makes a special sound when he's found an especially great bug and all the hens come running over to get some and he surprises them with, alas, no bug but some of his good rooster loving.

I imagine if they communicate about good bugs they would probably not be able to contain themselves when they tasted an egg.

We've only had egg eaters when there is breakage maybe from an ancient hen laying or a deep freeze cracking an uncollected egg. Even then they might get away with it since they will eat shell and all.

Did I mention that there is a baby chick out there in the snow? One of our hens decided to hatch out a single egg.

Roosters are quite sneaky (and hens are dolts; they fall for it every time)!

Eggs are VERY high on their "Yummy List," and they all come a'runnin' when I toss one out there (occasionally I'll find an egg that's been laid in some odd spot who knows how long ago, and just give it to the birds rather than worry about it being spoiled; sometimes I accidentally crack them myself, when I'm washing them).

*grin* I've just discovered that I have a broody hen sitting on eggs. WTH? Don't these birds know what season it is?!?

This just cracked me up!

I would love to raise chickens. *sigh*...maybe someday.

But back to the op...

My mom couldn't get me to eat a brussel sprout no matter how long she made me sit at the table. My disgust for them lasted up to about 10 years ago when I started the Zone Diet. I learned that they were one of the most nutritious veggies and since that was what I was mostly eating, I gave them another try. It was tough going at first, but somehow I managed to get through it and amazingly enough, they are now my favorite vegetable (along with broccoli).

Well, the four eggs my hen was sitting on have hatched. :thumb:

Took them out from underneath the hen yesterday morning and put them in an incubator, then went to work. When I came home, three had hatched (the last hatched overnight). When they're a few weeks old, I'll give them back to the hen to raise.

Unfortunately, they're half Araucana and half Leghorn, so they're going to be boring old white chickens, but hopefully they're not all boys and their eggs will be colored.

http://img407.imageshack.us/i/dg7.mp4/

Ahhhhh what cute little peepers..

We just had to lop off all our chickens heads.
They, um, weren't performing well.