Are soft-shelled eggs common at the end of a laying cycle?

[Winderdear]

My hen Août has been laying quite consistently since she was 24 weeks old, around Thanksgiving of last year. Lately she has had two instances of trouble laying, where one normal (or slightly pointier than normal) egg has been followed with a soft-shelled egg. This happened once, and I wrote it off as due to stress from heat. However, it happened again last night, and it has not been hot outside.

Yesterday she laid her egg first thing in the morning, foraged very actively around 3pm, and then afterwards she started showing lethargy and a lack of appetite. I managed to get her to eat some (maybe a third) of a scrambled egg with a calcium pill mixed in, and let her sleep because she seemed exhausted. Overnight she laid two very small soft shelled eggs.

This is my first time raising chickens, and I don’t know what to expect regarding how their cycle ends. Is this normal? Should I be worried? She’s been laying regularly for 9 months. How does a laying cycle normally end? Abruptly? Or does egg quality diminish first, as it seems to be doing with Août?

 

[Yardmom]

First off what are you feeding including extra calcium if any? Is she a production breed?
Unfortunately your hens egg issue sound more serious than the last egg before a break. Keep an eye out for egg binding. Hopefully someone with experience with this will respond soon.

 

[Winderdear]

First off what are you feeding including extra calcium if any? Is she a production breed?
Unfortunately your hens egg issue sound more serious than the last egg before a break. Keep an eye out for egg binding. Hopefully someone with experience with this will respond soon.

Thank you for replying

I feed her Scratch and Peck layer mash, with oyster flake and egg shells on the side. Occasionally they get some black soldier fly larva and I have been giving them each 1/4 of a pickling cucumber out of my garden for the past week or two. I am going to hold off on the cucumbers for a while. When the last soft-shelled egg happened, they had been eating watermelon regularly. It might be a coincidence, but I thought she might be low on calcium due to being near the end of her cycle and those sort of treats may be keeping her from eating her feed. She also gets to forage supervised for about 2 hours daily.

She is a Blue Cuckoo Marans, so not a production hybrid. They still seem to pump out the eggs though, so maybe she’s still considered a production breed?

What is an end of cycle normally like? How is her situation abnormal?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I see by your signature you have several other chickens. I assume all of them are normal. That means you do not have a flockwide problem but have an individual hen problem. It also means you are not doing anything wrong if they are normal.

Each hen is an individual. We can talk about generalities and what they do on average but any hen can be an exception to this average. Commercial laying hybrids tend to have a laying cycle 13 to 15 months long. Yours are not commercial hybrids. I don't know of any studies on dual purpose chickens and don't think those would be very valid anyway. Too many differences between flocks and breeds and how they are managed.

My dual purpose pullets tend to start laying late fall and lay through the winter. They continue laying until the molt the following fall when the days get shorter. You can always have exceptions but the end of cycle for me is that they quit laying and molt.

Lately she has had two instances of trouble laying, where one normal (or slightly pointier than normal) egg has been followed with a soft-shelled egg. This happened once, and I wrote it off as due to stress from heat. However, it happened again last night, and it has not been hot outside.

Overnight she laid two very small soft shelled eggs.

This tells me that she is releasing two yolks to form eggs some days instead of the normal one yolk and one egg. This can happen to any hen, as long as it is a one-off oops I don't consider it a problem. We are all entitled to an occasional oops. But when it becomes a pattern there is something going on. They only make a certain amount of certain products like eggshell material or whites in a day. If they lay two eggs you can expect small soft-shelled eggs.

I don't know why she would lay fine for nine months and suddenly change like this. I'll do the scary one first. Some diseases can cause egg laying issues. She is acting sick so this is possible. I think you are in the United States based on your breeds. You might call your county extension office and see what it takes to get a chicken necropsied. That's like an autopsy where they cut one open to see what caused death. Find out how much it would cost (that varies by state) and ask how to store her if she dies. That generally means keeping her in the fridge or on ice in an ice chest but not freezing her solid. This way you are prepared to make an informed decision.

It could mean she is at the end of her individual laying cycle and will glitch until she molts.

It's possible she had some type of birth defect that was fine for a long time but suddenly kicked in, maybe triggered by that extreme heat. Something similar to someone having a heart problem that is fine until it kicks in and causes a heart attack. But related to her reproductive system.

Or it could be something else entirely. I really do not know.

I wish you luck, I'd hate not knowing.

 

[Winderdear]

I see by your signature you have several other chickens. I assume all of them are normal. That means you do not have a flockwide problem but have an individual hen problem. It also means you are not doing anything wrong if they are normal.

Each hen is an individual. We can talk about generalities and what they do on average but any hen can be an exception to this average. Commercial laying hybrids tend to have a laying cycle 13 to 15 months long. Yours are not commercial hybrids. I don't know of any studies on dual purpose chickens and don't think those would be very valid anyway. Too many differences between flocks and breeds and how they are managed.

My dual purpose pullets tend to start laying late fall and lay through the winter. They continue laying until the molt the following fall when the days get shorter. You can always have exceptions but the end of cycle for me is that they quit laying and molt.


This tells me that she is releasing two yolks to form eggs some days instead of the normal one yolk and one egg. This can happen to any hen, as long as it is a one-off oops I don't consider it a problem. We are all entitled to an occasional oops. But when it becomes a pattern there is something going on. They only make a certain amount of certain products like eggshell material or whites in a day. If they lay two eggs you can expect small soft-shelled eggs.

I don't know why she would lay fine for nine months and suddenly change like this. I'll do the scary one first. Some diseases can cause egg laying issues. She is acting sick so this is possible. I think you are in the United States based on your breeds. You might call your county extension office and see what it takes to get a chicken necropsied. That's like an autopsy where they cut one open to see what caused death. Find out how much it would cost (that varies by state) and ask how to store her if she dies. That generally means keeping her in the fridge or on ice in an ice chest but not freezing her solid. This way you are prepared to make an informed decision.

It could mean she is at the end of her individual laying cycle and will glitch until she molts.

It's possible she had some type of birth defect that was fine for a long time but suddenly kicked in, maybe triggered by that extreme heat. Something similar to someone having a heart problem that is fine until it kicks in and causes a heart attack. But related to her reproductive system.

Or it could be something else entirely. I really do not know.

I wish you luck, I'd hate not knowing.

Thank you very much for such a detailed response. That’s a lot to process. She is currently acting normally now that the soft-shelled eggs are out. She initially wanted to sit for a while in the nest box this morning, which was what she did last time this happened. Someone told me she may just be dealing with some inflammation after passing the soft eggs. She got up and ran around chasing bugs and eating clover with my other two hens around lunch time, and looked her normal self.

That first event was on June 15th, and until now she was behaving normally without any lethargy, though she picked up a new habit of clucking when she needed to lay. She kept laying every other day for a couple weeks, then took 5 days off and started losing a wing feather here and there. The other girls also at that time seemed to be dropping more feathers than normal so I assumed we were close to molting time. Then we got a wave of cooler weather and she started laying again. Now, 40 days after the first incident, she laid the soft shelled eggs mentioned earlier.

My hope, of course, is that she is glitching a bit before she stops laying for the year. Her body probably needs a break. I will stay watchful for any other signs of illness though, and will update if something comes up, or if she indeed starts her molt in earnest. I’m grateful for your advice and insight! These girls are more pets than livestock to me, and I’m struggling with how fragile they seem to be.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I wouldn't panic yet at 3 soft eggs as glitches do happen and it is normal to see more problematic eggs at the start and end of a laying cycle, but if you continue to see them every so often up I would consider supplementing calcium via tablet/pill, maybe every other day, for as long as she lays this season. Some birds (especially much older layers) seem to benefit from having extra calcium above what they'd normally intake.

 

[Winderdear]

I wouldn't panic yet at 3 soft eggs as glitches do happen and it is normal to see more problematic eggs at the start and end of a laying cycle, but if you continue to see them every so often up I would consider supplementing calcium via tablet/pill, maybe every other day, for as long as she lays this season. Some birds (especially much older layers) seem to benefit from having extra calcium above what they'd normally intake.

Thank you! I really hope that it’s just a transition into molting. I’ll try supplementing calcium for the rest of this laying cycle, every other day, and hopefully it will stop the soft eggs from happening.

 

[Chubbicthe2nd]

How is Août now? Hope she's well.

 

[Winderdear]

How is Août now? Hope she's well.

She finally started molting, and is feeling much better! Thank you for checking on her!

She continued to alternate between a few soft shelled eggs and a couple normal eggs until the day she started molting about a month ago. I’m hoping she resets and doesn’t have this trouble next year, but only time will tell.