Egg without a Shell!

[Gloria's mom]

I've tried to read about why chickens lay eggs without shells and I am still not sure if this is something to be concerned about. My Gloria is 18mos old and has never had any problems with egg production. She eats Layer 16%. She the run of the backyard all day eating bugs, worms, a little bit of watermelon and vegetable (tomato and pepper) plants. This morning to my surprise there were two eggs. One extremely small egg and one without a shell. Can anyone tell me if this is something I need to be concerned with or not.

 

[Domestic_goddess]

I've seen this 2 times with my hens and it's only when they are beginner layers. I don't think it's anything to worry about, Good Luck!

 

[Nif]

I have a chicken who lays eggs with out shells a lot. I got her from a guy when she was about a year old, and he didn't feed any chicken feed or grain...just grass and bugs was all they got. She's a buff orpington, and seems healthy otherwise.
Every once in a while, couple times a month, she lays a really white egg with a decent shell. Actually I got 2 hens from this guy, the other is a comet, she doesn't always lay great shells either. She just got a good set of feathers for the first time too. I've had them a little over a year so they are at least 2 years old.
Do you supply your chickens with oyster shell?

 

[Gloria's mom]

No, I've never given Oyster shell. Every now and then she gets scratch. She's a white Polish and has been laying for about a year now.

She's always been healthy, except she did have bumblefoot recently. Her foots healed now and it looks great.

Is Oyster shell important with the food she gets. I give her Dumor Layer 16% pellets. It says on the bag that's its a complete healthy diet. I figured that should do it and then treats every now and then. How important is Oyster shell?

 

[threehorses]

I would definitely make sure 90% of her diet (at least) is a completely fortified "laying" pellet or crumble. It's designed not only to have the minimum* amount of calcium needed, but also the right amount of vitamin D for its absorbtion as well as not too much phosphorus which is important to calcium absorbtion, but can cause calcium deficiencies if it is too high.

I would also immediately offer free choice (ground, not pelleted) oyster shells. They're easy to find at most stores either in a small package (about $7 for a package that will suit about 10 hens for a while) or in larger bags in the back if you have lots of birds. The reason for using oyster shell rather than ground egg shells is that they're just a lot more readily absorbed in the blood stream.

A wise vet once told me "an old boot has a lot of minerals in it, but if you ate it you wouldn't get any use of them - they're not bioavailable". The same goes for some feeds. Use the ones you know are readily absorbed, very bioavailable. Oyster shell has been that standard even for industries for ages.

I just put mine in a two-hole cat dish (from the dollar store) with granite grit in the other side. Sometimes I just mix them, or toss a little oyster shell out to garner interest from the gals.

In this case, first day, I'd take some "flour" from the oyster shell (the finely ground flour like stuff) and mix that in the feed, or a 1/2 a tums tablet ground up and dissolved into some egg yolk, or on watermelon.

I would also highly consider spraying their feed with cod liver oil twice this week, or dribbling the contents of one cod liver oil tablet onto a cup of feed twice this week for her and a few other girls. More is not better. The vitamin D in that product will help calcium absorbtion.

More information on "why" tomorrow. But this is my advice today.