broody hens and bad eggs?

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Avyron

Avyron

Chirping
5 Years
Jul 27, 2014
41
4
62
I have four silkies and naturally one or the other often goes broody at the drop of a hat (or egg) - so one lady will steal all the eggs and find somewhere new to sit on them. Every so often we get some eggs that are a bit "dodgy" and it seems to be the ones the lady sits on. I was wondering if it is just due to her sitting on eggs too long and making them warm or if one of my chooks has an issue? three of my four lay near identical white eggs (the other lays cream eggs) so its impossible for me to tell if it is only one with didgy eggs

Also how long can eggs sit under her bottom before going iffy? Is it possible one or other is laying somewhere weird I am missing then the broody ones are picking up eggs a couple of days old? I have loads of cover and hidey holes for them and they often choose random places to nest.
 
The dodgy eggs are from being sat on and kept at 100F (38C) for days.

I've eaten non-fertile eggs that had been sat on a couple days. Fertile eggs will start to develop in short order.
Older than that I usually feed them back after cooking them thoroughly. When you open the egg and the albumen is very runny and the yolk is flat or already broken, that's an old egg.

I have a friend with your situation. She doesn't eat her eggs because she never knows how old they are.

I know it's hard with a silkie or 4 but it's best to break them as soon as they go broody. A wire bottom cage suspended to get air to the bottom usually works after a couple days.

Also, I'd work on getting them to lay their eggs in the nests. They're creatures of habit so if you lock them in with the nests till they each lay a couple eggs in the nests may be all they need for a while.
 
Last edited:
400
Does anyone know what caused this?
 
It's similar to an egg in an egg. The egg backs up from the uterus and at some point, probably in the magnum joins up with the next ovulation and re-enters the shell gland.

Cool picture, thanks for posting.

I have 2 pictures of eggs in eggs. One is a green egg inside a brown egg.

It happens so rarely that no one knows the cause.
 

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