Egg mystery

[UnaOfStormhold]

I keep finding hen's eggs in my garden and can't work out why.

In December I planted some bulbs in pots ready to go out. When I planted them out in January I found 2 hens eggs buried in different pots (I'm sure I didn't put them there). They were both date stamped. In February I found another one, intact, buried in a trough near the greenhouse. Last month, two on the lawn, broken open and mostly cleared out. Today I found two on the lawn, one in the raised bed, again broken open and mostly empty.

What is going on? The broken ones could be being eaten by foxes (we have lots in the area) but the buried whole eggs are baffling me. As they're datestamped it's presumably not free range chickens getting a bit too free range. Is the Easter bunny getting going early?

An animal is definitely getting them from somewhere and burying them in your garden, or caching them for future use. Crows tend to do this kind of thing.

Otherwise, someone is fucking about with you, or trying to grow an egg tree 🤷 Do you have young children?

Foxes will cache whole eggs by burying them - I've dug up a few.

If they are datestamped I expect you've either got a neighbour who feeds them, or who forgot to eat a box of eggs and binned them. Fox raids bin, hits jackpot and buries his treasure for later.

Or a very bold fox - we had one get into our kitchen via the catflap & steal a packet of bread rolls (we now have a microchip catflap!).

A small animal is stealing them from a bin and stashing them for later. They're good for your plants though, I wouldn't worry about it.

What was the date stamp? Curious how long they had been there.
If we have not used up eggs & they have gone past the date, & fail the sink in water check, we put them in the compost heap so it could still be foxes.

Foxes generally carry eggs away from nests. They may then eat them or they will cache (bury) them for consumption later

Another vote for a fox stashing them.

Love the idea of the egg tree!

I've never been able to read the date stamps as they were too smudged.

Foxes would make sense, though I'd never heard of them burying eggs and generally people are pretty good at using their wheelie bins round here so they wouldn't be easy to get at. Eggs on compost heaps would make sense.

I'm not worried - well except when I found the first one and wondered if I had accidentally planted an egg instead of a tulip bulb, I mean I'm peri-menopausal so I wouldn't have put it past myself...

Is this not how aubergine plants are grown?

We feed foxes and give the occasional egg to our longest resident female. She never eats them where we can see her and always runs off in the opposite direction to the den. She’s back pretty quickly for the regular food so is hiding them somewhere so she doesn’t have to share with the other foxes.

The one time we put an egg out that was found by a male, he sat down and ate it there and then. Took 10 minutes and he turns up far more regularly now in hope of finding another.

@TargusEasting :D surely only in the US though?

@Foxfeeder, do you live in a town starting with F by any chance?

I suspect someone is deliberately leaving eggs out. One of my neighbours hard-boils eggs and leaves them out for the foxes. I find eggshells all over the place! And the foxes are in superb condition from such a great diet.

We used to find duck eggs buried - we lived next to a canal and there were ducks on the garden every day, We can only assume the foxes would steal them and bury them. The weird thing was the ground above was completely normal, no signs of disturbance. We would find them when we were putting new plants in.

Well Mumsnet is a learning experience, I had no idea people fed foxes, let alone deliberately put eggs out for them, nor that foxes buried eggs for later use.

[quote UnaOfStormhold]@Foxfeeder, do you live in a town starting with F by any chance?[/quote]
He, he. No.

I changed name just in case I did though 😀

They don’t just bury eggs, they do it with peanuts, other leftovers too, then pee to mark where they’ve buried it.

They also give our cats’ kills a meaningful end. It is not unusual for me to say “there’s a dead squirrel in the garage” which will be put out for them when the cats are inside. I am looking forward to this year’s cubs.

Foxes love eggs which they usually hide just in case they are hungry. Much misunderstood creatures.