Consistent soft shell eggs

[fal8823]

Not likely...have had a couple long term softshell layers, they were just fine other than the mess they made in the nests everdamnday.

Argh tell me about it!!! Such a mess!!

 

[fal8823]

Sounds like I might have to give daily calcium citrate a go. Does anyone know what dose?

 

[azygous]

The egg building process is so complex and finely tuned, it's impossible to easily figure out what is going wrong. It's like running an automated factory assembly line with many different materials and moving parts and suddenly discovering the product is not being assembled properly. Where does one begin to look for the cause?

We know that stress is a big factor in egg quality. Light, nutrition, age, disease all play a role in poor egg quality. All we can do usually is to treat the most likely causes with what we can easily obtain. That would be calcium. It's kind of like squirting WD40 on those moving parts on the works of the automated assembly line and hoping that will get things moving again.

Calcium citrate minimum 400mg once a day. Up to 600mg is fine.

 

[aart]

Argh tell me about it!!! Such a mess!!

Drove me nuts!
I do have pieces of vinyl in bottom of nests, and an extra one, so easy to lift entire mess out and replace vinyl and bedding without having to scrub wooden nest.
That doesn't save any other eggs that are in there tho.

 

[casportpony]

Hi casportpony,
I do give her spinach but not large amounts. I thought it was ok in small amounts....please correct me if I'm wrong as I am pretty new to this.
And is on layer feed. Ive tried different brands but no luck so far.

Spinach is fine, but it should not be counted as a calcium source.
I started this thread about it:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/spinach-and-oxalic-acid.1327080/