First egg today!!! but it has a hole in it.

chickykids

Songster
May 25, 2021
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We were so excited to get our first egg today until we picked it up and found that there was a hole in it (what a disappointment). I have read that it is really hard to break the habit of chickens pecking their eggs and I'm hoping that we are not going in that direction. Could it be that she was just curious or one of the other chickens were curious? It doesn't look like it was eaten. Thanks!
 
We were so excited to get our first egg today until we picked it up and found that there was a hole in it (what a disappointment). I have read that it is really hard to break the habit of chickens pecking their eggs and I'm hoping that we are not going in that direction. Could it be that she was just curious or one of the other chickens were curious? It doesn't look like it was eaten. Thanks!
Pic of 'hole' would help here.
 
The real egg is the cute small one in the middle. We had the three fake eggs split between their three nesting boxes. We found the fake eggs together yesterday and the new egg within them today. The hole is on the underside of the egg. Thanks!
 

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I did crack it open and the shell was quite thin but had a very thick membrane under the shell. It was hard to open it because of that. They have had access to oyster shell for about a month or more. I too thought that nothing was eaten.

I will pay close attention today and see if I can catch it close to laying.
 
I think the key is that the shell was quite thin. As you probably know when a pullet first starts laying the egg may be shell-less, thin-shelled, really thick-shelled, double yolked, no yolk, or no whites. Or they can really be weird. It can take a few days for her to work the kinks out of her internal egg making factory. That thin shell is not surprising and does not indicate anything is really wrong. She should work it out.

I don't know how that egg got punctured, several possibilities. Hens walk on the eggs getting on and off of the nest. Maybe it was punctured by one of her claws. Chickens investigate things with their beaks, it may have been pecked. Hens stand up a bit when they lay an egg, not much but a little bit. The egg and the poop come out of the same vent hole. To protect the egg form getting dirty a small bit of the egg laying plumbing protrudes from the vent. The hen stands up enough so that plumbing doesn't get dirty and she takes trash back into her body. Maybe the egg hit something to puncture it when it fell. It's really interesting that a hen collected all the fake eggs into one nest, maybe she was handling the newly laid egg and punctured it. So many possibilities.

Yeah, that doesn't look eaten at all so it was not opened on purpose. You don't have an egg eater. That has to have been an accident almost certainly due to the thin shell. That nest looks well padded but you might check for nails or screws protruding that could possibly puncture an egg. Certainly monitor the situation but I don't see anything worth worrying about yet. Let us know how it goes.
 
I had been checking every hour today for eggs until this afternoon when I went three hours. Instead of an egg I found this mess. I have heard of shell-less eggs but how can you prevent this bad habit from stopping in this situation. I am in a cold environment so I cannot wait outside all day. Thanks!
 

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I had been checking every hour today for eggs until this afternoon when I went three hours. Instead of an egg I found this mess. I have heard of shell-less eggs but how can you prevent this bad habit from stopping in this situation. I am in a cold environment so I cannot wait outside all day. Thanks!
Just get it cleaned up asap, then check as often as possible.
Could have been another thin shell, or a soft shell.
 

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