15 month old EE with laying issues

[Little Coop on Salt Creek]

Hi @aart,
I appreciate all your wisdom and that of everyone else on here who is so willing to share their experiences. I do know that many things don't have a clear 'this is what you do for this' answer. Kinda like with raising kids, LOL! This is such a great place to have open discussion and for me it's kinda like talking out a problem with a friend. Sometimes, just hearing yourself get it out sparks an idea or allows someone else to give their take and it isn't anything you'd even considered.

I'll keep ya'll posted on our progress.

 

[Little Coop on Salt Creek]

Here is a pic of what the egg (after I pulled it off the coop floor... after someone ate its contents... not naming any names... a SLW named Bella ) looked like. This is the same as what yesterday's egg looked like.


Wondering how long I should wait to see if this is gonna turn around. @aart it's not gonna take me long to decide that having a flock full of girls who anticipate eggs to munch on is NOT what we're after.

Curious if @azygous, @Beekissed, @lazy gardener , @rebrascora and @Blooie have any input here as well.

 

[Blooie]

I have to give my husband an injection every month. If he doesn’t get it, his pernicious anemia can get worse, and if left untreated PA can be a fatal condition. Once upon a time, it always was.

What does that have to do with the egg issue you’re having with your chicken? Ken and I eat the same foods. We drink water from the same tap. We live in the same house. But I don’t have pernicious anemia. He can’t absorb vitamin B12 from the foods he eats. I, like most people, can. A pound of calves liver a day won’t change his physiology. It’s possible that whatever nutrients and calcium your other birds are getting simply can’t be utilized in the body of your problem girl.

It could also be a faulty reproductive system. I lost a bird to reproductive issues. Nothing we could have fed or supplemented would have made much difference for her. She started out laying just fine, but as time went on her system just deteriorated. It didn’t take long, either. She’d only been laying for about a month when every egg we got from her was a rubber egg, she strained to pass them, and the egg quality was horrible.

I don’t mean to diagnose anything. I’m not qualified to do that, and there are certainly smarter people than me on this forum who might have an answer for you. If someone has a better idea, so much the better! But it’s happened to many of us that we get a bird with deeper problems than anything visible. My gut reaction is to cull the bird, as much as we hate to think of it. If she keeps doing this, and your other birds develop the habit of eating the bad eggs, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to worry that they may start turning to egg eating as a habit. Sometimes we have to do the hard stuff for the good of the flock, and it sounds like the extra stress you’re having about it is taking away some of your enjoyment of the flock.

Not going to be a popular response, but at this point and looking at that mess in your photo, it’s the only one I’ve got. Could it be a simple matter of supplements? Of course it could. But changes in diet and supplements don’t usually produce instant results.

 

[lazy gardener]

Chickens are opportunistic feeders. If there is a weak shelled egg, it will get eaten. Shells can be of poor quality if birds are coming back into lay after a winter break. Occasionally, a new layer will have difficulties with the "egg conveyor belt". I would be more apt to blame such an incident on a defective egg than on a hen who is attacking and eating perfectly normal eggs. Sometimes a hen who is heading into reproductive illness will repeatedly lay weak shelled or rubber eggs.

Check your feed quality: Is it within the 6 week freshness window? (feed older than 6 weeks is loosing nutrients at an alarming rate) Is the protein and calcium content adequate? Are you watering down their nutrients by giving low nutrient value kitchen scraps or scratch grains?

Finally, you might try giving them a good multi vitamin. I am convinced that much is overlooked regarding egg quality. We tend to assume that protein and calcium content plus what ever is in that blended feed is sufficient. IMO, providing supplemental vitamins can often improve egg quality in a bird that is laying sub standard eggs.

Occasionally egg eating or even feather plucking will point out an issue with poor nutrition in the flock.

After going through all this, it may be time to try to figure out who is laying the weak eggs and cull her from the flock.

 

[azygous]

Rose is about the same age as my EE Ethel. At the start of spring, when she began laying again after winter break, she was laying two eggs at a time every other day. It was a fixed pattern. It would have been fine if the two eggs were both normal. But one was always soft.

The problem was that with two egg coming down the chute at the same time, there wasn't calcium for both in the shell gland. The biggest danger was the soft egg getting stuck since they're much harder to pass. It happened at least once, and Ethel was is serious trouble. I was afraid I was going to lose her.

I started her on calcium citrate 400mg per day right away and continued it for a month. During that time, her one soft egg became a normal egg, and then she began laying just one normal egg at a time again. I believe the calcium therapy worked to restore her system to normal. I doubt it would have been this successful had she been an older layer, though.

As @lazy gardener says, chickens will eat any broken, mangled egg they find. Mine do it all the time. Yet in eleven years of keeping chickens, I have never had an egg eater - the type that cannibalizes eggs in the nest.

 

[Little Coop on Salt Creek]

So I've checked all the boxes it seems.. @Blooie and @lazygardener. I know exactly what girl is laying the problem egg as I've witnessed her do it twice. I could deal with a rubber egg occasionally, but with 21 big girls right now.. I don't want to encourage anyone to get into an egg eating habit.

One concern is that the last 2 eggs, must have felt normal to her. She wouldn't lay the first crazy hard shelled one in the nest and she wouldn't lay the rubber egg in the nest. The 2 soft shelled eggs.. she's laid in the nest. Making them prime targets to bust and get eaten.. in the nest. It makes me sooo sad to have to either put down or give away a normal acting hen in every other way. I know it might come to that though.

@azygous, where did you get the calcium citrate? How did you administer?

 

[lazy gardener]

Ca Citrate can be bought at any place that sells vitamins. I have some one who is laying soft shelled eggs in my nest boxes. If I find out who it is, I will be culling her. She's messing up the nest several times/week, and leaving the good eggs covered with yolk.

 

[azygous]

As LG says, you can get the calcium citrate anywhere. I take it myself to ward off osteoporosis. I like the calcium citrate with D3 over plain calcium carbonate as it absorbs better.

I smash the pill and fold it into a dab of peanut butter, natural, no sugar. It's a treat and the hen eats every crumble.

It's been my experience that very often a shell-less egg gets dropped in the run or on a poop board because it doesn't feel like a normal egg, and it's not easy to pass. But Ethel was laying her shell-less egg on top of her and others normal eggs, and it was a mess to clean up. Sometimes, a hen would eat the egg, but I ended up having to wash the yolk off the other eggs.

I'm more forgiving than LG. It's not a death sentence when this happens. Probably because I'm not a big meat eater.

 

[Little Coop on Salt Creek]

As LG says, you can get the calcium citrate anywhere. I take it myself to ward off osteoporosis. I like the calcium citrate with D3 over plain calcium carbonate as it absorbs better.

I smash the pill and fold it into a dab of peanut butter, natural, no sugar. It's a treat and the hen eats every crumble.

It's been my experience that very often a shell-less egg gets dropped in the run or on a poop board because it doesn't feel like a normal egg, and it's not easy to pass. But Ethel was laying her shell-less egg on top of her and others normal eggs, and it was a mess to clean up. Sometimes, a hen would eat the egg, but I ended up having to wash the yolk off the other eggs.

I'm more forgiving than LG. It's not a death sentence when this happens. Probably because I'm not a big meat eater.

Well, as you know @azygous, I have an incredible soft spot for my girls; As our late Elsa could attest to. Rose is a beautiful girl, and I hate to loose her over this. I'd be willing to try this to see if it helps. I found this that I have on hand. It's a powder already, but I could make it work. I just don't know about the increase of Vitamin c and Magnesium.

 

[Blooie]

See? I’m always glad when people smarter than me are here!