Flock of 6 mo. old pullets - all sorts of egg weirdness!

[RaeRae2]

Well. I had "thought" that by 6 months of age, my 12 pullets would start to get things sorted out. Hmmm, I was wrong. Here is the summary:

• 2 EEs are laying consistently - 6 eggs a week. A blue and a green egg, very tiny but beautiful shape and color.
• 1 EE is laying consistently but lays the egg on the floor - will NOT use a nestbox
• 1 Ancona laid 1 egg, 2 weeks ago, never laid another one
• Somebody (?) is laying a soft shell egg on the driveway every day
• 1 Dark Cornish started out laying beautiful big brown perfect eggs 7 days a week, now they are pale, wrinkled, and malshapen.
• Somebody (?) laid a big ugly thin shelled malshapen egg 2 weeks ago, never another one like that

So of 12 pullets, at 6 months of age, only 4 of them are laying daily, and 1 of those 4 is now laying an ugly wrinkled, deformed egg every day.

Everything I have read says that Hamburgs are very fast maturing birds and are usually laying by 4 1/2 months. 3 Hamburgs - NO EGGS. I have 2 Brahmas and 1 Wyandotte, so it's expected that they might not lay anything until 9 - 12 months. But all these other ones....what the heck!

They get to free range 2-3 hours per day. They get all sorts of fruits, vegetables, and grass in their run. They get Purina layer pellets, black oil sunflower seeds, and cracked corn. There are 6 nest boxes in different places, at different heights, so they can choose.

 

[americanvalkyrie]

They are only 6 months old... I'd wait awhile longer before assuming anything is going wrong. The misshapen eggs sound questionable, so if that doesn't heal then you might have a problem. But each time I've had a new group start laying, I've had eggs all over the place until they figure it out. And new pullets are often intermittent in their laying.