egg without shell or eaten egg??

[sara728]

Hi all,
I'm very new here, we just adopted out first three layers two weeks ago. They are about to turn 1 year old. I noticed today when I was cleaning out the hen house that the bedding in the nest box was wet in a spot. It seemed almost as if there was egg there. I looked but could find no shell anywhere. If a hen had broken and eaten one of the eggs I assume I would have found some residual broken shell, right? Could it have been an egg without a shell? Or just loose poop?
Thanks for any insight you have for this new gal!
Sara

 

[ChicKat]

Welcome Sarah728

Could be any of the things that you mentioned. -- Lately I have been hearing a lot of people on the forum talk about shell-less and thin shelled eggs. (been having some from my own chickens too- so maybe I am more tuned into it than usual).

Someone here said it is an instinctive behavior for a chicken to eat a broken egg so that no predators would know about the nest. Makes sense, and in that case, I would expect that the instinctual behavior would be to consume all that is possibly consumable---including the entire shell.

There's no real way to know...though. when I have a puddle in the nest box, it is usually an indication that there was an egg problem. --

Here are some things aimed at getting better shells - A. 1 Tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar per gallon of drinking water. B. extra calcium - available oyster shell, crushed chicken eggs, cheese, yogurt as a treat. C. Layer feed with calcium D. Chicken vitamins, or a vitamin D supplement mixed into the feed....

Hope it was a one time thing---and you don't have a repeat of the mystery.

 

[Lizz9311]

...
A. 1 Tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar per gallon of drinking water. B. extra calcium - available oyster shell, crushed chicken eggs, cheese, yogurt as a treat. C. Layer feed with calcium D. Chicken vitamins, or a vitamin D supplement mixed into the feed....

Question regarding the yogurt specifically: do you have to avoid low fat yogurt? What about flavored yogurt?

I have a soft-shell issue apparently. This is the second day in a row I found a broken/eaten soft-shelled egg. There are free-choice oyster shells in the pen, but the girls don't seem to eat much of those. I'd like to try yogurt, specifically Yoplait Strawberry as that's what I have on hand and want to make sure it's ok.

 

[fiddlebanshee]

I would stay away from flavored yogurts as they contain a motherload of sugar. Just plain yogurt would be best, organic would be better as they have most likely still live strains of good bacteria. Yogurt that is overly processed is dead.

 

[ChicKat]

I Agree with fiddlebanshee--- The fewer the additives the better.

That being said.... I'm experiencing very thin shells now. So I ground up a bunch of eggshells in the food processor, added the calcium carbonate to the scrambled eggs---that came from the thin shelled eggs that I feed/fed back to the chickens.

Mine have free choice oyster shells too--- and lots of egg shells...but I went through a shell-less period and now I'm getting super thin shells that I can put a fingernail through.

Here is what I am wondering...I put out a ton of oyster shells--- and never thought that they would get 'old'--- but if they get/got wet in the rain...would they be less appetizing to the chickens? (I'm going to put out fresh and wash and dry this bunch --- )

just thinking that mine are short on calcium--- and scrambling the powdered eggshells will give their calcium a boost. And it is my two older ones, my barred plymouth rocks. -- We have just switched too, to HOT weather (93 in the shade yesterday)--and I'm wondering if that my have something to do with their shells. -- because the weather switch seems hard on animals..For some reason, I have been seeing a LOT of posts about egg shell problems on the forum lately......