Barred Rock's eggs now too large.......What can I do?

afoxyladync

Chirping
6 Years
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My Barred Rock, Pepper, is beginning her second year of laying. She has always laid beautiful, evenly shaped, normal sized, brown eggs characteristic of the breed. About a month ago she started laying these freakishly large, thinner-shelled eggs that have a wrinkled tip. The shell is no longer light brown but a pale flesh tone. The yolks are fine but the albumin is thinner than usual. I have six other chickens and no one else has had any problems with their eggs. Two of my hens are younger than the rest of the flock and for a couple of months I provided a mix of layer and grower/finisher but again, no egg changes in the other hens. Pepper has appeared healthy throughout this entire time but for a short period of time her stool was a light caramel color and seemed almost carbonated. Online I saw much debate about yogurt but I have her a little and her stools have looked normal since. They receive top quality feed (with grit mixed in their pellets), scratch grain and mealworms, and fresh veggies. Their coop and run is kept clean with weekly cleanings and turning of the sand in the run. They truly are spoiled rotten!

I have read the common egg problems article on here and nothing is adding up. Any advice?

I am attaching two pics. One shows these whoppers with the wrinkly tops from a top view. The other shows them from the side. Note in the side view pic that her last normal sized egg (although lighter in color than it used to be) is to the right of the whoppers.



 
I don't know if there's anything you can do about her large eggs--that may just be what her eggs are going to be like from now on. If her eggs were double-yolked, I might suspect she was eating too much, but as you said the yolks are normal. My guess is, she just lays big eggs, and the wrinkling is just something that happens sometimes. The shell starts out soft as it's moving through the hen's system, and if it bumps up against something--like another egg or part of the hen's body--the point can become wrinkled. I have an EE who does the same thing, though to a lesser degree, and the wrinkle is always most noticeable when her eggs are on the large side.
 

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