Oh, boy, if your wife would shiv you for eating the eggs, she’s gonna totally disembowel you if you do anything less than properly care* for those chicks once hatched. They are so totally sweet and endearing around a mother hen, especially when they hide in her feathers and then pop their heads out, or get brave and climb around on her! Or, as “Mom” leads them around on foraging expeditions.
Chicks until over half grown (which takes MONTHS) are extremely vulnerable to predators too, although “Mom” will do her best to try to protect them. This will depend a little on their ancestry - some half grown chicks can fly short distances better than their parents. In any event, the consequences of wifey finding multiple scatterings of feathers and maybe a partially eaten carcass might not be good...
If “Mom” likes her spot, she may decide to stick around, too, and the chicks, now pullets and cockerels, may also.
*I’m guessing you don’t really want to become a chicken farmer. It’s a fair amount of work...
It could be a male cat. We had one try to take up residence in my Mom’s garage, and it wanted to mark everything. Not good.
I’d say you have three choices:
1) Eat or disappear the eggs and scare / drive “Mom” off repeatedly and / or deny access until she gives up.
2) Get or fashion some sort of proper cage / house / protection and let the hen hatch the eggs, then try to find someone who will take in the young family. Get wifey to help with care and feeding!
3) Make up a mostly closed nest box out of a sturdy cardboard box, with a “sliding door” then when “Mom” is out, put the eggs in it and place it where she’s been brooding on them. If she takes to that, once again see if you can find someone, preferably already with chickens, who will take them in, box and all. Again, wifey should help. Basically, the box is a trap (and means of transport).
#2 sounds good. Our small community has a facebook page people do this and find good homes quickly.
Live backed up to an open area (golf course), plenty of chickens with their baby chicks hang out. When granddaughters visit, wife throws out birdseed to entice the chicks to the patio... But this is the 1st time they have ever laid (or is it “layed”?) eggs in the garage!!
Thanks for the advice... Just a weird situation...