VERY deformed egg!

For about two months now we have not gotten any good eggs form our 2 ISA Browns. I am not sure if they are molting...every once in a while they will lay a very soft shelled egg and we figured they needed more calcium. We are giving them egg shells and mixing other calcium into their food. We did introduce new chickens to them slowly about 4 months ago and they are all getting along, not sure if that might have something to do with it though. I am attaching a photo of an egg we got today-scared me at first because it looked like an organ or something! Any ideas what could be going on? Could they actually be molting? They have all their feathers. They are about 2 years old now. Hopefully I get these pics in here right!

Oh my. IDK but that doesn't look good. Hope someone can help. I'd be afraid to touch it if I found it. That doesn't even look like an egg.

ewww what on earth caused that??? Eggs shells you say ??/ are they recycled from your own chicken egg shells???

I know others have posted similar pics, I'm sure someone will come up with an answer.

Look up internal laying, especially posts by specklehen. I had some hens that did this.
Sorry you are experiencing this. the outcome is not good.

What is happening is that your bird was eggbound and the egg continued to have layer after layer added. I suspect it was also cooked by her body temperature.

The most important thing for you do to immediately is take stock of your feeding program.

Laying hens should always have 90% or more of their diet as a completely fortified laying feed. The other 10% can be more of the same, or treats, or grains.

The reason is that laying pellets are designed with the right ingredients to allow calcium absorbtion and utilization. Calcium absorbtion is a three-legged stool, the three legs being calcium, vitamin D, and phosphorus.

If any of the legs are too much or too short, the whole stool falls. The poultry industry has put years and years of research into what a hen needs to lay good solid eggs. Take advantage of it.

You should also be providing free-choice oyster shell always to laying hens. Laying feeds are designed after years of research for a scientifically average hen who needs approximately .45% of her daily intake as calcium with a ration of at least 6 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus.

However some perfectly healthy hens can need as much as 15 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus! The feed manufacturers can't provide a 15:1 ratio in feeds because it would be toxic to force the 6:1 needing hens to have that much calcium. They assume that the savvy poultry man will provide either oyster shell (or in the old days, lime grit). Oyster shell is a highly bioavailable source of calcium as it dissolves readily when in the gizzard being ground down. Unlike egg shells fed back, it readily absorbs into the blood stream. Hens who need more calcium have an instinct for picking up oyster shell if you show them it's there.

Phosphorus is rarely deficient as it's provided by cereal grains of which feed is mostly composed. If anything, too often phosphorus is too high in the diet as people supplement with a good deal of grains. If the body gets in too much phosphorus, it will take calcium from the egg-making process to handle and bind with the phosphorus. If the grain overage continues, the hens can actually deplete their very bones to make up for too much phosphorus, resulting in adult rickets. More often, we see soft shelled eggs, followed by "no egg" which are more often shell-less eggs that never leave the body. So keeping grain levels in control is vital.

Vitamin D is sometimes deficient. For your hens, I would recommend a 2 week regimine of some cod liver oil on top of their feed - very little, say cod liver oil sprayed on top of the feed twice weekly from a hand-held mini sprayer like you use for gardens or found in the cosmetic section. That provides enough vitamin D without overdosing. (More is not necessarily better in this case.)

For this hen, I would definitely recommend a one-time serving of a 1/2 tums tablet crushed into a treat or served on watermelon for example. The other hens wouldn't hurt to have it as well, but this one is having what I call "sticky" eggs - eggs that are likely not quite hard enough that as a result aren't sliding through the cloaca.

I feel that if you follow my advice, you might be surprised at how your hens turn around.

Thank you for the replies....the two chickens are on the layers feed as well as the oyster shell...we mix it in with their food and also give them some as a treat at least once a week. I will try the tums trick though-thanks! This is the first time that we have gotten this type of egg...usually it is just the very soft shell that either breaks coming out or by us just picking it up. Hopefully the tums helps...

no offense but that is NASTY looking.. glad you told me what it was incase i ever saw that with my new chickens.. they just started laying and so far so good..

Maybe try offering the oyster shell in separate container, to be eaten free will. You say you offer it mixed in the food, but as threehorse states, one or two of your flock may need considerably more than the others. This way those specific ones can eat as much oyster shell as they need. Just a thought.