There are alot of specifics that we don't know like how many birds and are they confined or free range.
Generally, though I would say make sure that they have plenty of feed and easy access to clean water but in an area very separate from where they lay. If you can, make the nesting area darker than the rest of the coop as birds will lay in a drk hole and eat in the sunlight. Hopefully they will stop associating eggs with food if they lay them in a dark spot.
Also, try to keep the laying area from becoming congested. Make enough room for four or five hens in a spot but not much more as all the hustling breaks eggs and broken eggs=canibalism.
If they are in a dark pen, try getting them in the sun a few more hours a day or adding artificial lighting.
If all else fails and they get to where they eat most of what they lay, take a pair of wire cutters and trim off 3/8 of an inch of the top half of their beak.
Good luck.

YIKES!! I would hate to have to trim their beaks! Mercy! Let's hope they don't get in the habit.

As for the rest...

They get plenty of feed - special stuff for laying hens plus mixed grain and veggies every afternoon. There are water dispensers in a couple of places in their pen. They get the trimmings and weeds from the garden along with melons that have gotten overripe and, boy, do they LOVE that! They get so excited about "salad"! They have a pen, shaded by trees all around, that is about 30' x 25' (there are 10 of them plus the rooster) and they have a coop that has roosting perches - sort of rails elevated like a choir. And there are nest boxes along the sides of the coop - accessible from the outside so it is easy to get at the eggs. So far, they have laid their eggs right where they were supposed to - in those nest boxes. I do think we should get some more straw or something to make them a bit "cushier" - maybe that doesn't matter to a hen. There are wood shavings in there and they have scratched them pretty much out of the way and laid their eggs on bare wood. It must be pretty dark in the coop. There are no windows. The back can be opened for cleaning and the roofs over the nest boxes lift up so you can easily gather eggs but usually all is dark and cozy.

I am hoping this is just curiosity - they have only JUST begun to lay. I really hope they will leave the rest of the eggs alone - and get busy laying, too!

Thanks much for your response, CPP. I appreciate input since we are such newbies at this.

Sounds like you have a good setup, so I wouldn't worry about the egg thing. My hens lay the occassional soft shell egg which invariably gets popped and eaten, and if we find a cracked egg we feed it back to the chickens. So far (for years) no problems with the birds turning into egg eaters. :) That kind of thing usually evolves from boredom and/or overcrowding.

But the subject has come up here before, so if you do a search on egg eating you should find some threads with various techniques on foiling it. :)

Velvet ~:>

I'm new at this too. My hens have been laying for a month or so.

A few days ago, we had one egg get eaten. But it turned out to be just a random event. My guess is that it somehow got cracked, and so someone decided to polish it off. Now that a few days, and many eggs, have passed, I'm not currently concerned.

Here's to hoping that these were freak events!

--Jonathan

Jonathan, I'm very encouraged by your mention of "many eggs". As I said, ours have only just begun to lay and dh is particularly impatient for them to become much more productive.

Thanks, everybody, for the input.

My hens at one point were also breaking them once in a while...but it's stopped ! thank god because someone said to me that once an egg eater,always an egg eater and it would be have to be taken out of the flock :( didn't happen! all is good

Hope it's a random event.

Egg layers need lots of calcium, and one source is to feed them crunched up eggshells. Toast the shells in the oven on low heat, and crunch up the shells so they don't resemble eggs. The chickens love it, and their eggs will have nice, thick shells.