Why are my daughter's hens eating their eggs?
Chickens eating their eggs.
Oh boy, that's not good. I would gather them right away, and try to keep them from being in the nest too long. That is hard to break..
It usually starts when one egg breaks by accident and a chicken discovers it tastes good....if one chicken starts eating eggs, the others will copy it and you will lose all your eggs.
Like ZZ says, the only hope is to collect the eggs shortly after they are laid and try to determine if it is one or more hens doing the eating. If it is only one, you pretty much have to remove her before the others start.
There are a number of ways to attempt to break a chicken from eating eggs...using rock hard fake ones, filling one with something they dislike, like mustard (hot pepper doesn't work because birds don't have receptors for capsaicin) and letting them get a nasty beakful. Some people have luck with these methods...but it not a sure thing.
We have found that if we give them more protien sometimes they will stop eating them. Also a poultry block helps a lot too.
I've never had this problem except on one occasion.
I had 2 hens go broody. I got some fertilized eggs from the neighbor and put some under each hen. One hen successfully hatched all 9 eggs. The other hen's eggs kept getting broken and someone ate the baby chicks out of the inside of the broken eggs. She wasn't able to hatch any babies. I don't know who did it. She finally gave up being broody after a month and now follows the other hen and her babies around while they free range. I sure wish I knew what happened but there are no problems now. Gross eh?