- Jan 21, 2011
- 72
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My girls are just starting to lay so I've been watching them carefully. Two have started ( one EE, one GLW), eggs are perfect, girls are using the nesting boxes perfectly, no mishaps. My two BOs have seemed just on the verge of laying and have been in and out of the boxes, are squatting, etc. Tonight when I went out to close up the coop, one of them was sitting in the box and the other was on the perch just outside watching her very intently. I opened the hatch on the outside of the nesting boxes to take the egg if there was one and she was in the process of laying. When it came out it was milky and translucent and had a lot of what looked like mucus around it. I thought maybe it had to harden so I left it and when I came back, it was gone with some white and yolk left in the box, no shell to be found. I cleaned out the box but am assuming either she or her sister ate the egg. I've never seen an egg being laid before and I know the shells are soft as they come out, but this one was pretty translucent. I'm also very disturbed that someone ate the egg, but if it was a "defective" first egg, could she have just been cleaning up after herself?