Soft shell egg and high calcium egg in one day

[sakerobot]

We have nine hens (7 BRs and 2 Buff Orpingtons) who have been laying eggs pretty normally for over half a year now. Today I found something strange in one of the boxes:

One egg was very soft and had a dent in it which looked like another egg had been pressed against it. It wasn't leaking, but I quickly disposed of it by smashing.

Another egg in the same box was also irregular in that its shell shows an excess if calcium (picture attached).

The question is - is it possible that the same hen could have laid both eggs, where one got "stuck" while the next one started developing? Or is that silly and did they just come from two different hens who were having a bad day? (Two days earlier, there was a strange dog that scared them. Protected by the fence, but the chickens got very riled up.)

Calcium egg picture is below:

 

[EggSighted4Life]

The question is - is it possible that the same hen could have laid both eggs, where one got "stuck" while the next one started developing? Or is that silly and did they just come from two different hens who were having a bad day?

My guess is two hens.. but more detective work would be required to rule out an individual..

Decent article with cool video in the following link..

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/common-egg-quality-problems.65923/

The first one you describe does sound like a slab sided egg. And this one has excess calcium deposits (you already know).. But in your theory for same hen.. this egg would have had to come first.. right?? I mean of course not technically, but as described.

For me.. hiccups can happen at any time.. not just for new layers.. But changes in lighting, predator disturbance, weather phenomenon, and even getting older.

FWIW, I've seen some of the (exact) same things coming from my girls with about the same laying history in recent weeks past.. one thin brittle broken shell (though maybe not slab sided) and another with calcium deposits. Nutrition is dialed in so not in question but due to the diversity of my current flock.. I can tell it's not the same layer having the differing hiccup type. It does appear to be leveling off here.

Hope it levels off for your ladies!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't think the two eggs are linked but who knows? I sure don't.

It is not common but not that unusual for a hen to lay two eggs in the same day. It happens more with pullets starting to lay or hens approaching the end of their laying life but can happen with any hen at any time. Some are more prone to it than others. Sometimes a hen accidentally releases two yolks the same day. If the two yolks are released close together you can get a double yolked egg. If their release is separated by some time the first egg receives an eggshell and so does the second. But hens only make a limited amount of shell material in a day. If they use most of it on the first egg then the second can be shell-less or have a thin shell. There isn't enough material to cover both of them.

If two eggs are in the shell gland at the same time they can be slab-sided as shown in the link above. If that shell was actually cracked it was probably cracked when laid because it was so thin shelled. Those photos can be really helpful in figuring it out. After looking at the photos was a third egg slab-sided or somehow marked?

The egg making and egg laying processes are fairly complicated. To me it is kind of surprising that so many get it perfect each time. But every hen is entitled to an occasional oops. As long as it is rare I don't worry about it. If it becomes a common problem then there could be something wrong with the individual hen (most likely), the flock, or maybe even how you manage them. If it regularly repeats we may need to chat.

 

[sakerobot]

I think the mystery might have solved itself when I found 5 more eggs later in the day. This comes out to a total of 10, so one of the 9 hens must have laid the pair sometime between 6am and 11:30am.

It's not a duplicate from the previous day, as I check the egg boxes when I open and close them. The previous three days we collected 7 eggs each, so this also leaves the possibility of a hen going through two cycles without laying the first egg.

On a side note, as double yolks were mentioned - we've had at least 2 instances of double egged yolks from one of these 9 hens, who have laid a total of 950 eggs per our egg log. All of the other eggs have been fine, except for an isolated incident in December where a hen with an injured comb laid a couple shelless eggs. She had since recovered and has been doing fine though.

I suspect this anomaly was likely the fault of the dog that was harassing them in the morning a couple days ago. The dog was big, but was acting like a puppy, wagging the tail and "playfully" chasing them from across the fence. The hens didn't see it that way. The hens gathered in one corner of their yard and kept screaming for minutes after the dog ran away until I went over and they calmed down. I think that was likely a high stress event for them.

We will be adding more fencing and expanding their yard soon. I've never seen that dog before in the year we've lived here, so I'm not really concerned. But we do have foxes, raccoons, fishers and bobcats, and have to take fencing seriously.