Like everyone else, I'm loaded down with eggs this summer. All of my girls have been laying like mad, so I've been carting the eggs and sticking them in a cool place. One day I notice something...Whiffy. I go through all my eggs, flipping them over, and find the culprit, my Cuckoo Marans's egg. She lays huge eggs, 70-75 g. each, but she also seems to have the most issues with laying. For one thing, I've noticed her eggs tend to have a bit of a liquid on them that's slow to dry on them at times. None of my other hens (various breeds) have that. She's also the only one of my hens that's laid a wind egg, only once, but still.
So anyway, the bad egg. I pick it up and notice there's a dot of something oozing out of it, on the lower half of the egg, but more like the side than the bottom. I put it aside, and keep going through my eggs just in case. I also do the float test with some of them, and they all pass easily. I do end up finding another bad egg...And it's from my Cuckoo again. I think back, and remember that I had been cracking eggs for the whites earlier that month, and cracked open a bad one (SO GROSS) and that was ALSO from my Cuckoo. Her eggs sometimes have blood spots in them too, but not always. She's not grossly overweight, and is right in the middle of the pecking order so she's not unduly stressed. Oh, and I decided to plop one of the bad eggs in water to see how it compared, and it didn't float either!
That's making me doubt just how effective the float test is, or if this is something different that's going on.
Has anyone else had an issue like this before? Do some hens tend to lay bad eggs? Is it not so much the eggs are rotten, as there's something internally wrong with her?
So anyway, the bad egg. I pick it up and notice there's a dot of something oozing out of it, on the lower half of the egg, but more like the side than the bottom. I put it aside, and keep going through my eggs just in case. I also do the float test with some of them, and they all pass easily. I do end up finding another bad egg...And it's from my Cuckoo again. I think back, and remember that I had been cracking eggs for the whites earlier that month, and cracked open a bad one (SO GROSS) and that was ALSO from my Cuckoo. Her eggs sometimes have blood spots in them too, but not always. She's not grossly overweight, and is right in the middle of the pecking order so she's not unduly stressed. Oh, and I decided to plop one of the bad eggs in water to see how it compared, and it didn't float either!
That's making me doubt just how effective the float test is, or if this is something different that's going on. Has anyone else had an issue like this before? Do some hens tend to lay bad eggs? Is it not so much the eggs are rotten, as there's something internally wrong with her?
