"broken eggs"

[chefy]

hi all, I keep finding a broken egg in with the others quite regularly and am still finding the soft shelly membrane as well, can someone give me some ideas please, thanks.

 

[NikkiCole5]

hi all, I keep finding a broken egg in with the others quite regularly and am still finding the soft shelly membrane as well, can someone give me some ideas please, thanks.

You need to give them oyster shells! You can buy them at tractor supply if you have one

 

[N F C]

x2 on the crushed oyster shell. If you just leave some set out all the time for your birds, they will eat it when they need to.

Good luck!

 

[chefy]

Hi all,



I live in the mountains, so where they live they have plenty of stone and grit to peck at. like today for example.....I have 9 chickens, I had 7 eggs, 5 were fine, 2 were broken....and I mean broken flat and a membrane one lying around the chicken house, I always thought chickens were careful with there eggs, they do all tend to lay in the same place,....is one being careless....or spiteful, does this happen. regarding the membrane one, do you think one chicken has a problem

 

[mamahenAtlanta]

I think you need to give calcium supplement (ground oyster shell or ground eggshell, or at minimum in their feed) -- grit (sand, pebbles) are a necessary supplement but it's the calcium supplement that makes the shells hard and less likely to break.

 

[chefy]

hi, thanks for the reply, we do give them back all the shells from the eggs we eat, and all the other eggs we have are all fine with a good shell

 

[Ridgerunner]

They are not being spiteful or doing it on purpose. You have to decide if it is a flock problem or an individual hen problem, or in your case, two hens. Chickens need a certain amount of calcium for their egg shells. They can get this from various sources, Layer feed, calcium supplements like oyster shell, some from certain plants they eat, or hard-shelled bugs or crustaceans, though it is hard for them to get enough just from plants or creepy crawlies. It’s not how much calcium is in one bite or from one source. It’s how much total calcium they eat in a day, and that averages over several days.

A possible source is form the rocks they use for grit, but that is only if that rock contains calcium. Limestone does but granite and a lot of other rocks do not. Just because they are eating rocks does not mean they are getting calcium. It has to be the right rocks.

Some hens do not have the instinct to seek out calcium if they need it for the eggs. The vast majority do but they are living animals. They are not all the same. Also, some hens are just not set up right inside to properly digest the calcium they eat. None of them digest all the calcium they eat, a lot goes right on through and out the back end, but some are really poor at digesting calcium. Still the odds of you having two of these are pretty bad. I doubt this is your problem.

Were the other five egg shells sufficiently hard and thick? If they are, there is enough calcium around for all of them to get it. If the other egg shells are thin then you should offer a calcium supplement, it’s a flock problem.

What it really sounds like to me is that you don’t have hens you have pullets just coming into lay. The hen’s internal egg making factory is fairly complicated. Most pullets get it right the first time but often there are glitches when a pullet first starts to lay. You can get huge double yolked eggs, tiny eggs with no yolk or maybe no white, misshapen eggs or strangely colored eggs, eggs with extremely thick shells or eggs with very thin or even no shell, just a membrane. Usually it doesn’t take them long to get the glitches out of their system but some can last a week or more.

Something else that makes me think you have pullets just coming into lay is the eggs dropped anywhere instead of in the nest. Again most pullets get it right to start with, but some seem to not know what is happening and just drop their first few eggs wherever they happen to be. That could be from the roosts at night or just walking around the coop or run. Once they gain control of the process they will start laying in a nest, either one you have for them or they’ll find a regular place to lay, maybe in a corner on the coop floor or maybe outside somewhere. But in the meantime you can find some in strange places.

Often when you are there looking at them I can be hard to know what is really going on, let alone across the internet. All I can do is guess what might be going on. I could be right or I could be way off.

Good luck!

 

[tiffvitorino]

Im having an issue also when you say Pullet what does that mean? I have 4 Hens they were doing really well about 9 weeks old. Sometimes I get huge beautiful eggs and some are small and a few double yolks. They have 4 nesting boxes and they are always where they are suppose to be. Then lately Ive been finding some on the ground. My Hens are Road Island Reds and most eggs are brown, but once in a while I will find a white egg on the ground or a brown one with really thin shell they are broken open on the ground? Are they trying to eat them? I got my hens from a feed store and got them at 4 weeks old they started laying right away. Beaks on a few are broken or chipped. Im really new at this as you can tell.

 

[chickybuddy100]

Im having an issue also when you say Pullet what does that mean? I have 4 Hens they were doing really well about 9 weeks old. Sometimes I get huge beautiful eggs and some are small and a few double yolks. They have 4 nesting boxes and they are always where they are suppose to be. Then lately Ive been finding some on the ground. My Hens are Road Island Reds and most eggs are brown, but once in a while I will find a white egg on the ground or a brown one with really thin shell they are broken open on the ground? Are they trying to eat them? I got my hens from a feed store and got them at 4 weeks old they started laying right away. Beaks on a few are broken or chipped. Im really new at this as you can tell.

Hi..pulley meand a young hen ..kind of like a teenage hen ...my hens had the same egg problem not to long ago and I gave them some grit & oyster shell from ..FARM SUPPLY that way u know the grit has calcium ..
my hens are laying wonderfully now


...the reason your hens are laying on the ground sometimes could be because they need there nest box bedding cleaned out...hahahaI have 4 hens just like you and they started laying on the ground and I changed the litter in there nestbox and they were laying back in it..






Oh and if that doesn't help take some Easter eggs and tape them where they can't be opened and set them where you want your hens to lay and not only will it make them lay more but it will make them lay where you want

Hope I helped ..if you have anymore questions just tag me in it and I'll help you out....let me know if this helped

 

[tiffvitorino]

Yes thank you that helps... I ground up egg shells, put it in their feed and cleaned their boxes again. They were pretty clean but did it just in case. Thank you for the help!!