Bumpy eggshells, now white clustered masses in albumen?

KikiZobi

In the Brooder
Aug 31, 2020
15
3
39
Seattle, WA, USA
Veruca, my ~1 yo Easter Egger is the lowest pecking order chicken in our 6 chicken flock. Recently, with the sunshine, egg laying has been taking off, and we've been getting 4-5 eggs/day. The whole flock is on a layer feed with oyster shells offered. No other hens are acting out of their norm. The chickens roam the fenced in yard. She appears healthy otherwise, and is acting like normal.

We noticed last week that her shells were particularly bumpy on the pointed end, and sometimes had so much calcium accumulation that the tiny bumps rubbed off. We thought nothing of it, knowing they are gobbling the oyster shells these days. HOWEVER, I cracked open one of her eggs this morning and I noticed the firm, round, clustered masses very integrated into the albumen-- they look nearly identical to the ones that would run off the outside of her shell. I'm wondering if these are parasite eggs? A sign of too much calcium? Something else?

I'm attaching a photo of the eggshells we've been seeing the past ~2 weeks, and then the egg I cracked this am from yesterday.

I found a similar sounding post on BYC from 2012, but the photos aren't clear and there was no result posted: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/egg-whites-have-bubbles-and-white-spots.652771/
 

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I had some like this with my young hens. I always crack the eggs into a bowl to make sure all the eggs look okay, the eggs like yours were always scrambled and fed to the flock.
My girl that laid eggs like this early on, lays eggs perfectly now.
 
I wanted to follow up on this post for anyone with similar wonderings.

We went to our feed supplier shortly after this post. He wondered did we want more oyster grit too? We said no, one chicken had strange eggshells as a result.

He shook his head and said we should pull it and that sometimes chickens can get addicted to it, perhaps something about the fishy taste? he suggested. He said it would take a long time to get out of her system. We stopped offering the grit-- and currently offer no calcium-- and she STILL is producing shells with abundant extra calcium over a month and a half later. The eggs themselves usually don't have the calcium deposits inside anymore, but I still don't trust it enough to give the neighbors her eggs. I can report back again down the line.
 

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