ok i think we have a chicken snake eating eggs we found some skin today. do the hens eat shell and all or just yolk? because we are not finding any shells in there boxes when we go in. does any one have any advice on keeping the snakes out?? we have the boxes off ground but i think they still may be getting in there any advice??? :( i dont think i am ever going to get to hach my babies!!!!!!

Aha! I had a snake take some eggs too as well and my precious chick Sprouty last year. I never saw the snake but the eggs and baby vanished without a trace right from under the mother (who was squawking her brains out while wild birds gave snake calls). Some roosters will attack smaller snakes but most are afraid of the big ones.

A chicken will break an egg and mostly eat the yolk. They may eat some shell but there would still probably be some evidence of leftover shell or yolk. If the eggs simply vanish, a snake makes sense. To keep snakes out, the holes would have to be smaller than the snake. That's probably not practical. You could try to devise a way to keep them out but I don't see how it would keep them out but let the hens in. Most snakes steal eggs under cover of darkness. I suggest checking the nest at least twice a day, first thing and at dusk (after the hens are up for the night but the snakes haven't come out yet). If you are home, a mid-day check also makes sense. Most hens tend to lay between dawn and noon.

we are going to try something to fix it we actually got one egg today so maybe thwere is hope!!!

a bullfog may have eaten the eggs but bullfrogs normally like live prey

um.. i dont think we have bullfrogs in our chicken coop!!! i dont even think there are any around my home that i know of,.

Bullfrogs won't eat chicken eggs.

ok i dodnt think so i was just making sure!!! and being as my boxes are roughly 3 ft off ground i didnt they could get there any ways!!! i think my hens may have just quit laying for awhile we had a cold spell for a while where our weather was about 20 degress below normal so i think they may have just gotten off schedule is this a possibility? beacause they are laying full force again.

Yes, they will lay less when it's cold. I have two hens. One hasn't laid in over a year. The other is doing an egg a day. She doesn't lay in the winter.