Brittle egg shells

[Tookie]

You can give her one calcium citrate +D3 tablet a day, the kind you get in the vitamin section of the grocery store or drug store. Walmart sells a generic form pretty cheap. Just pop it in her beak and she will swallow it, so you don’t have to actually remove her from the run to do it. Shouldn’t take long at all. Do this until her eggshell quality improves.

@azygous @Tookie Anything to add?

Nothing to add!

 

[tripletfeb]

I’ve been researching how supplement her calcium even more. I was hoping to find a liquid supplement I could add to their water so I don’t have to pull her out of the coop/run each day for an extra feeding. The other 6 girls have rock-hard shells so it’s definitely something specific to her. She also lays eggs that have weird calcium deposits on them. I’m wondering if the issue is in her laying mechanism. I’ll start feeding her extra egg and shell on the side but I’m concerned there’s a bigger issue.

I have a leghorn mix that lays eggs exactly like you mention. Brittle shells but sometimes with calcuim deposits. I haven't done anything to her to try to fix it, I just assumed it was a problem with her egg laying machine. Let me know if anything you try helps

 

[AZDesertChick]

You can give her one calcium citrate +D3 tablet a day, the kind you get in the vitamin section of the grocery store or drug store. Walmart sells a generic form pretty cheap. Just pop it in her beak and she will swallow it, so you don’t have to actually remove her from the run to do it. Shouldn’t take long at all. Do this until her eggshell quality improves.

@azygous @Tookie Anything to add?

Thank you!

 

[EggSighted4Life]

I’ve been researching how supplement her calcium even more. I was hoping to find a liquid supplement I could add to their water so I don’t have to pull her out of the coop/run each day for an extra feeding. The other 6 girls have rock-hard shells so it’s definitely something specific to her. She also lays eggs that have weird calcium deposits on them. I’m wondering if the issue is in her laying mechanism. I’ll start feeding her extra egg and shell on the side but I’m concerned there’s a bigger issue.

Sounds more like a shell gland issue than a calcium deficiency issue (to me)..

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/common-egg-quality-problems.65923/

Seeing you're in AZ.. the heat can cause weak shells.. but I would expect it to effect more of you're whole flock and also for CCL to be fairly heat tolerant.. expectation doesn't make either true.

 

[Ridgerunner]

This is a fairly common topic on here. The entire flock is doing great except for one hen. I agree to not treat the whole flock for a one hen issue, no need to mess up the rest trying to treat this one.

This just about has to be a problem with her shell gland where the shell material is either not being produced or if it is produced it is not being deposited. It probably doesn't have anything to do with how much calcium she eats. If her bones are healthy and she is overall healthy her body is digesting calcium, her shell gland is not using it.

I'd try the calcium pill. If that works you may be doing that the rest of her laying life. If it doesn't work I don't know of anything that will.

 

[AZDesertChick]

Sounds more like a shell gland issue than a calcium deficiency issue (to me)..

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/common-egg-quality-problems.65923/

Seeing you're in AZ.. the heat can cause weak shells.. but I would expect it to effect more of you're whole flock and also for CCL to be fairly heat tolerant.. expectation doesn't make either true.

Thank you for the link. It does seem like it might be a shell gland issue. I’m going to do more research on this.

 

[AZDesertChick]

Thank you for the link. It does seem like it might be a shell gland issue. I’m going to do more research p

Sounds more like a shell gland issue than a calcium deficiency issue (to me)..

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/common-egg-quality-problems.65923/

Seeing you're in AZ.. the heat can cause weak shells.. but I would expect it to effect more of you're whole flock and also for CCL to be fairly heat tolerant.. expectation doesn't make either true.

The link you sent was really helpful. After a little research and looking carefully at the way the deposits were formed on the egg shell and the way they were breaking, I felt it was actually more likely to be a nutrition issue. We have one really piggy barred rock, so we have to give measured feed instead of free feeding. It’s really high quality food, but I started to suspect that my Legbar (who is one of this years’ babies) was maybe be kept away from feed bowls by the older girls too much, even though we have 6 bowl for 7 chickens. I started pulling her out of the coop and offering her a little more feed, plus I would take her cracked eggs but not broken eggs, scramble them, and feed them back to her over a couple of days. Within about 3-4 days of doing that, no more cracked or broken eggs. She’s laid almost perfect eggs for 6 of the past 7 days. They have a little dusting of extra calcium, but that’s becoming almost unnoticeable. Thank you so much for the link. It helped me tremendously in figuring this out.