Creepy Soft Shell Egg...is this one normal? Take a look...

Tonight I had two chickens fighting over the nest box - one has been trying to sleep in it for a few nights so we've been putting balls in them. My husband went out to close up the coop and found two birds in the nest box refusing to budge! He kicked them out and put the balls in. Then I went out to find them both crammed in there, with the balls on top of each other! And low and behold my poor girl Rosie had laid this super creepy soft shelled egg!!!...YUCK!! It's like a sack of goo or something and it has a tail! What the heck? Is that normal? She's not been laying for about 1 month, been molting I'm pretty sure. I keep hearing about soft shell eggs but has anyone seen one with a tail like this? At the very end of the tail it looked like egg white. My boys were thoroughly entertained and sufficiently grossed out!!



This is the nest box situation:





Currently my husband is soaking the egg in salt water to see if it will demonstrate osmosis for the kids....what a weirdo. Sheesh.

 

Ha! That's the first thing I thought of was an umbilical cord...that's totally what it looked like although we don't have any roosters or anything. She's actually my 'old lady' who is 2 years old so she was laying previously and we just haven't had any action from her in about a month now. This was the first egg in at least 4 weeks! Maybe she's just getting back into the swing of things. We did add a light to the coop about a week ago...??

 

Quote:Yes....I looked it up but couldn't find any pictures. That's so strange, a little concerning and definatly a bummer if true. I also saw some posts about eggs with umbilical cords attatched and the pictures of those I saw matched this strange egg. I don't have the guts to break it open but I'm SURE DH and the boys will not be able to resist tomorrow She is happy and perky otherwise. The only other things is that we've had her on duramycin for 7 days now for a runny nose and sneezing (which seem to be better now). We didn't expect to be eating eggs for a while becuase of that anyway so we'll just watch and see what happens I guess! This poor chicken has been through a lot since we got her so i'm not suprised at all to get a weird egg from her.....

And on the nest box sleeping habits, I've been digging poop out of them the past few nights from lucile (18 weeks, not yet laying, in the picture with Rosie). She's a stinker. She just doesn't want to roost with anyone else - we have a coop that would fit 6 easily, and only 3 hens in it right now and they all roost on different bars! Such girls.