Happy Hen Treats Ceramic Nest Eggs

I originally got a dummy egg at my farm supply to slip in with our birds' eggs to mess with my better half. They just weren't realistic enough though. I'm thrilled to report these are!!! First off they are slightly lighter in weight than a real egg. Only enough that one would have to be looking for it to notice. The real test- I slipped one of these "eggs" into the laying boxes. It got randomly collected and put in the egg basket. Now the waiting game started. For days I eyeballed that ticking time bomb of joy on the counter. One morning I had all but forgotten of my mildly evil sceme when I heard the screaming. It dawned on me that my plan was likely to blame. See my wife had one of our kids helping her fry some eggs. Being my kid, she was absolutely determined to get this "egg" to break. My wife upon witnessing this however thought it must have an unhatched chick inside (I really didn't see that coming, we don't even have a rooster). Well my wife freaked. See she had to stop this before what she thought was going to be an absolute horror show unfold as an unhatched chick, possibly still alive, spilled onto the hot cast iron, by her child's hand no less. The screaming stopped once she heard my tearful uncontrollable laughter. Then the other kind of yelling started. I was laughing so hard it was difficult to hear well but "heart attack" and "someday" were in there. Note- Said child apparently returned the "egg" to the basket and yes these can withstand boiling though they do float. I'll no doubt slip one into a carton to be given to a friend or neighbor soon. Well worth the cost of admission.

I was skeptical about whether hens needed a fake egg to inspire them to lay. For years I never had these fake eggs and didn't think I would need them. BUT I am much wiser now!First, I had new young hens who had not started laying yet. They were old enough to lay but week after week, they would not lay. (My elder hens had molted so nobody was laying.) After placing the fake eggs in the nesting box, the young hens figured it out within a day or two! All three started laying at that point.Secondly, now that all 5 of my hens are laying, I figured the fake eggs were unnecessary, so I took them out of the coop and set them aside. But with 5 laying hens, only two nesting boxes can get crowded sometimes. One day I realized that one hen was squawking up a storm and it seemed to be because the "preferred" nesting box was occupied. Why doesn't she just use that other nesting box, I wondered! It's identical and yet she won't go in there and lay her darn egg! So I tossed a fake egg into the "other" empty nesting box. That did the trick! She went right in and laid her egg! So having an egg in the box really does make a difference to some hens!Lastly, I've noticed that the hens will go to great effort to move the fake eggs from one nesting box to the other. I put one fake egg in each nesting box and a hen will spend 20 minutes moving a fake egg from one box to the other. OK. So I tried putting only one fake egg out -- in the less preferred box. On this day ALL 5 HENS laid their egg in that ONE nesting box because they all wanted to lay where there were already eggs. The "preferred" box was empty and even though they ALWAYS prefer to lay in that one box, NOBODY laid an egg in the preferred box because it was empty! So apparently it makes a difference for all 5 of my hens: they all want to lay where there is already an egg.Having learned from these experiments with the fake eggs, I will now work to have one egg in each box!!

I had a stubborn pair of hens that were brooding for too long. I put a couple of these eggs in their nest box, and the hens started laying again the next day!I purchased another set of ceramic eggs to put in my other coup. The hens there were eating their own eggs. The ceramic eggs are uncomfortable for the hens to peck, and they stopped pecking their own eggs after the addition of the fake ones.These ceramic eggs look so real that we had to write "fake" on them to keep from collecting them as real eggs... So the chickens weren't the only ones fooled!

Works perfectly! My hens laid right next to them as expected and it discourages my rooster from pecking any of the real eggs! We drew smiley faces on the ceramic eggs so my kids would know which ones they were instantly.

I bought this product so my new hens would learn to lay their eggs in the nest boxes. I had to put my initials on the bottom of the faux eggs because we were getting confused with the real eggs by sight discrimination. Incidentally, I was also having trouble with black rat snakes getting into my coop to eat the eggs. I removed two on two separate occasions and was just waiting to find another snake in there. Instead, I am missing a faux egg. I don't like the idea the guilty snake has died, but am more peeved I am out an egg. Take that to the bank....even wild snakes can't tell the difference these are faux eggs. I would buy several more packs if the price was just a bit lower. But with all this being said, I won't bother searching for another faux egg and just buy one when I really need it.

Our chickens are just starting to lay eggs, and the first hen was being very recalcitrant as to where she though she was going to lay. The nest boxes (we thought) were perfect for size, location, and position within the coop. This particular hen however decided that random locations within the coop itself was fine by her. After about a week of daily egg hunting, I tried putting a couple of these faux eggs in one of the nesting boxes, and when I saw her preparing to lay on the coop floor, I opened the nesting boxes from the outside, and reached down to start tapping on these faux eggs. It got her interested to the point that she jumped up in the nest box to investigate. After jumping in and out a couple of times, she settled on the fakes, and within a couple of minutes, added her own egg to them. She seems to have gotten the idea now, so we are hoping she will continue so the rest of the hens will take note and follow suite when they begin laying. These ceramic eggs are such a perfect match to the brown eggs our hen is laying, that we have to check very carefully to make sure we are picking the real one and not the fakes!

Eggs arrived, well packed and they look very realistic. Put them in the nest boxes and one disappeared overnight. Looked all through the nest box, on the floor of the coop and outside but it was nowhere to be found. I bought them to stop egg pecking but I cannot believe a hen pecked it to pieces and ate it leaving no trace. By the way, it is essential to mark these ceramic eggs to prevent giving them to customers by mistake. Too early to say whether the egg eating has stopped but I am hopeful.Oh dear, mystery solved. Looked through the hay in the nestbox very carefully and found they had wrapped the missing egg up really well in the middle of it so no-one ate it!!

These eggs do a good job of encouraging my hens to lay in the nesting box.They have also solved a problem I had with a magpie stealing my eggs.

Weighted correctly and coloured for standard brown eggs

Brilliant. At last my hens are laying IN their nesting boxes.

Great novelty