Tags
This will be short, but I’m hoping it will elicit some advice. After getting into a routine of four eggs a day from my four hens, I went out one day last week to find no eggs. Same thing next day. I concluded the girls had started a new little nest under a bush somewhere. A nest with eight lovely eggs in it. Well, if you could see my “yard” you would know what a disaster that would be. Even David Attenborough couldn’t find a nest of eggs in this yard.
Fancy an Easter Egg Hunt here?
My solution was to close them in the henhouse the following day, until there were four lovely googies in their usual spot. That worked just fine. For a couple days. Then they disappeared again. But I had cleverly left an old egg (recognizable by the extra stripes of poop) in the nest just to remind them…so I expected possibly five eggs to be there. There were none! not even the old egg, and no traces of egg. Well, they obviously hadn’t carried the extra egg out to a new nest somewhere, so it was someone else. But WHO?
My first thought was that it must be rats. There aren’t really any likely native animals here that would pinch eggs. The only candidates I can think of would be a quoll,
Spotted Tail Quoll – Egg Thief?
or a devil, but I think they would take a chook rather than eggs.
A real Tasmanian Devil
So perhaps rats. I’m not really sure that a rat could carry off an egg, but I couldn’t think of any other possibility. Could be a Norwegian Rat, or a native rat… Just an ordinary black rat. I plugged up some obvious rat tunnels into the henhouse and waited…
Alas! It was not the rats. I have discovered the culprit. Crows. (see this video of a crow stealing an egg) Yes! While I haven’t seen one carry one off, I have seen them entering the chook house or trying to get in. Each time there were no eggs, so I haven’t witnessed the actual deed, but I now feel certain that they are the thieves. Now my question is, How do I stop them???
Help! Please!
And please don’t tell me it might be snakes. MM
The Meandering Matriarch 
Pingback: Which DID Come First– The Chicken or the Egg? « The Meandering Matriarch
Any suspended decoy bird of prey (wedgetail eagle say) would also frighten the chooks, and they may not lay.
You could try placing a nest near the crows entrance and put a few china eggs in it. Crows are pretty smart though. They would move on to the the fresh eggs when they worked it out.
When I had chooks as a child my grandmother put old chicken wire over the enclosure, stretched from one side to the other, strained with fencing wire and clothes props to provide support in the middle where the wire sagged.
Looked a bit daggy but it kept the crows out.
I only had a half dozen chooks in a fenced 25 square metre yard. No free range for my chooks.
Put some half-eaten sandwiches or a loaf of bread out as a diversion. Crows always seem to like them. My husband likes to shoot mountain-ash berries with a slingshot from the kitchen window at the raccoons stealing his plums. Perhaps you could take up a similar firing position against that murderous murder.
I’ not terribly keen to reward the ratbags, but I shall find some sort of diversion. Maybe gumnuts, fired from a slingshot. But I’m not much of a shot. 😦
Do you have a critter that likes to chase crows?
Besides me, you mean? No, I don’t think so. Blossom, dearie does her best, but she isn’t terribly effective.
A dog, cat, steampunk scarecrow?
Cats and dogs are not allowed on the property–I have a Land For Wildlife covenant on the property to protect native species. But I do like the idea of a scarecrow! Might just have to give it a go. Thanks for the suggestion.
I reckon it’s the scorpions. 🙂
Har har har.
Crows are flying off with your eggs? Clip the crow’s wings.
Right. I have a better idea: YOU come clip their wings! Of course, then they would only have to hop away with the eggs.
Faaarrrrkkk, faaaarrrkkk! stone the crows! perhaps you wanna murder ’em! faarrrkkk! ffaaarrrkkkkkkkkkkkk!
HarHardeHarHar. This morning one was skulking overhead in a tree while I was feeding the chooks. When I yelled at it to piss off, it laughed at me! So, yes, I am considering murder. If only I could kick a football straight it would be the perfect–ironic–weapon.