17 month old hens stopped laying/laying softshell eggs

[Lisa jadede]

Hi fellow chicken peeps,
I have a small flock of six hens--three, 17-month-old Road Island Reds, a 17-month-old Americana, and two six-month-old Americanas. The older girls started laying last summer and laid fine until mid-winter, then petered out for a while and started laying more consistently in early spring. A couple months ago, we rehomed our Bared Rock hen and shortly afterwards, the older girls in the flock started laying less eggs and are now barely laying at all. I'm not sure if the two instances are related but I feel that it's worth mentioning. Our Bared Rock hen, Ruthie, was the leader of the flock and the older girls have seemed somewhat lost without her. Our little girls, the six-month-old Americanas, are just starting to lay and weirdly, are more consistent right now than their older "sisters." A new development occurred last week--when getting the chickens situated in their house for the night, we noticed a broken softshell egg. One of the big girls started eating it before we could stop her so we took her out to clean yolk off of her and when we put her back, there was a second softshell egg in the house. We've seen a couple other softshell eggs in the week since and always get them away before anyone can eat them, but the chickens haven't laid softshell eggs since they first started laying last summer. We give them a really good, Organic feed and provide it in multiple feeders so that they can eat as much as they want, whenever they want. We also have a sandbox for them to eat/hang out in and we provide them with oyster shells both in their feeders and in their sandbox. We also give them lots of fresh greens and a handful of dead worms a day. I'm wondering if anyone knows what they might be deficient in? We thought at first that they were molting but we haven't noticed that many red feathers around, and they don't look like they're losing feathers. Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.

I'm having the same thing with my Quail. One of them lays one per week. I'm wondering if it's nutritional??? But I bought my little flock off Gumtree and they've been excellent layers all along. This has started a few weeks ago. Egg with just membrane no shell.

 

[Freeloading Chickens]

Anything else but a balanced chicken ration can dilute the nutrition in they get from the feed.

The 17mos may be slowing production down to molt, if you are in the northern hemisphere, you can get some weird eggs at that time.

They may be getting ready to molt, I've noticed a couple of the 17-month-olds looking bare in places (around the butt and the crop). Thank you for the suggestion.

 

[theoldchick]

https://backyardpoultry.iamcountryside.com/eggs-meat/abnormal-chicken-eggs/