One girl has weak egg shells

LaBull

In the Brooder
8 Years
Sep 26, 2011
10
0
22
One of my girls out of the 7 has really weak egg shells. Like i'm talking crumble in your fingertips when you try to pick it up if the chicken hasn't already broken it when laying or the next girl that sits on it. The eggs are white and very noticeably different to the brown shelled eggs of the others. I have crushed shell grit on offer at all times and I dry and crush all the used egg shells and throw them back into the coop. I also give cheese as a treat. I'm just not to sure what else I can do.

Do I need to try and identify the chicken and supplement her some how with extra calcium. I am presuming it is calcium that is the problem. Or is this something not really treatable?

I must say trying to identify the chicken will be hard as i'm not home during the day, so getting in their after they lay is difficult.
 
Are you chickens new to laying? If so, then expect some teething troubles until they get their plumbing sorted out. Regardless of what kind of food you are using (general flock or layers feed) - if you provide optional oyster shell then there's not too much else that i can think of that you can do.

I'd suggest that something like natural yoghurt and not cheese (salt is not good for chickens) may be worth considering if you wish to give them a treat that has a calcium component.

All the best
CT
 
The chickens are a year into laying. The shell grit i was referring to is oyster shell + some other stuff. It seems just one girl isn't eating it. Interesting fact about the cheese. Wasn't aware of that. They won't be happy as it's their favourite thing.
 
The chickens are a year into laying. The shell grit i was referring to is oyster shell + some other stuff. It seems just one girl isn't eating it. Interesting fact about the cheese. Wasn't aware of that. They won't be happy as it's their favourite thing.

sorry about the cheese! My chickens love yogurt - they even clean it off each other!

I can't get oyster shell here in Kenya so i use limestone and bonemeal. I wanted to use a general flock food and provide limestone / bonemeal as an option for my layers, but they weren't having any of it so i had to switch back to layers. Maybe another brand with lower protein may help?

CT
 
I have the same thing with one of my girls. When I researched it, it was also mentioned that it could be a defective shell gland.
 
One of my girls out of the 7 has really weak egg shells. Like i'm talking crumble in your fingertips when you try to pick it up if the chicken hasn't already broken it when laying or the next girl that sits on it. The eggs are white and very noticeably different to the brown shelled eggs of the others. I have crushed shell grit on offer at all times and I dry and crush all the used egg shells and throw them back into the coop. I also give cheese as a treat. I'm just not to sure what else I can do.

Do I need to try and identify the chicken and supplement her some how with extra calcium. I am presuming it is calcium that is the problem. Or is this something not really treatable?

I must say trying to identify the chicken will be hard as i'm not home during the day, so getting in their after they lay is difficult.
If all the other birds are laying hard shells on their diet,
the one bird with weak shells could have a defective shell gland or a nutrition uptake problem or some other issue.

Is she low bird in the pecking order or showing any illness/stress?
You could try to isolate her to control her feed better, and maybe try some supplements, and just observe her health and behaviors.
 
I have a blue hybrid that lays thin shelled eggs too and they occasionally get broken and eaten in the nest box leaving the other eggs and the nest in a sticky mess. Thankfully it hasn't lead to them breaking and eating other eggs.... only when they get accidentally broken, so I don't mind in that respect, but it's a pain when I have half a dozen egg caked eggs to scrub and a nest box to clean. She's a few years old and it's been a problem pretty much as long as I've had her (She was bought from a friend who was down sizing 2 years ago and I don't know how long he'd had her) but I haven't the heart to cull her because she's a reliable layer and they are by far the biggest eggs of my whole flock. I hung about this morning waiting for her to lay, in the hope of removing it before it got damaged, but she was just teasing me. After half an hour she came out of the nest box and there was no egg. I know that sooner or later I'm going to get tired of cleaning the mess up though, especially now that my flock is getting bigger and minimising chores is more important. Eventually I guess one will break inside her and she will have health problems and I'll have to deal with it.
 

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