3 rubber eggs in 1 night --should I be concerned?

[newchickenista]

I have 17 hens that are 23 weeks old and are just starting to lay. So far about 4 of them have started laying, one of those her first egg was soft shelled and I found it under the roost. I check every morning and evening under the roost to make sure another one hasn't laid a rubber egg (the chickens do not have access to underneath the roost, so whatever is laid there of an evening is there until I fish it out. This morning, however, I found three rubber eggs under the roost, in very close proximity to one another.

What are the odds that three hens laid there first eggs in the middle of the night, in the same spot, and they were all soft shelled?

Is the best theory that something spooked them in the night, causing them to lay?

Is it possible for one chicken to lay 3 soft shelled eggs in one night? I know that is probably a stupid question.

I guess my main question is, should this concern me?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

You should be concerned but don't freak out - yet.
Anomalies are common with new layers. Laying in the middle of the night is an anomaly that happens to new layers. Many things seem coincidental in a flock, however, it is extremely unlikely that they all came from the same bird. If she ovulated 3 times in a day, it is possible since they obviously didn't spend any time in the uterus (shell gland).

Tell us about your feed and supplements, ventilation, possible stressors, lighting, other pets, etc..

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Being frightened will sometimes make the egg come out long before it's ready, with finding three I would think you birds were given quite the scare. My first though would be a predator looking around at night, so I would check for signs.

 

[newchickenista]

Well, they are just being fed layer crumbles with fruit and veggie scraps once a week or so, but they hadn't had that for several days. We have dogs that we let out once a day that the chickens are used to and the dogs pen is on the other side of the property (2 1/2 acres). There are neighbor dogs that are kept in a pen very close to the chickens that bark at any little noise or animal outside, again the chickens are used to them. Between those dogs and our dogs other animals don't get on the place without an alarm being raised. The coop and run are very secure and the chickens can't see outside into the run from their roost at night so anything that had scared them they would have had to have heard and not seen. I didn't see any evidence of predators around the outside of the coop. We also have 3 cats, and because of our one unfixed female, there is probably no end of cat charades at night. So they definitely could have been spooked by a tom cat fight or something. I only to 2 good eggs from those chickens today, where I usually get 4, so at least one or two of those eggs may not have been a first egg, but from a hen already laying.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Those tomcat fights scarred the heck out of me, that could be what happened.