This morning I observed that my Barred Rock Hattie was making a bigger racket than usual when laying her egg. After a while I went out to make sure she was okay, and I hand fed her some mealworms while she was sitting in the nest box. When she jumped out of the nest box I saw that she had been sitting in a pool of warm yolk (probably the whites too but whites are harder to see). I did not see any broken shells so I don't think we have an egg eater on our hands. Besides, the nest boxes pretty small it would be almost impossible for a chicken to simultaneously stand in the nest while bending down to eat an egg. I skimmed through this forum and found reference to chickens laying shell-less eggs, however, these chickens seemed to have laid "perfect" shell-less eggs meaning they were shaped like someone had cracked them over a pan. Hattie's yolk was not distinct and looked more like raw scrambled egg mixture. This is the first time I've seen a chicken sitting in a pile of yolk, although I have seen small dried bits of yolk on our eggs before. Might anybody know what's going on my sweet little Hattie?
