found lash egg & no-shell egg, but hens seem well?

[hennyp]

this morning i found this big lash egg (pic 1) & a perfect, unbroken egg without a shell (not pictured).

i suspect it was one of my 4.3 y/o hybrid layers who is currently moulting & has a poopy butt (pics 2 & 3 are the hen & the poopy butt in question). other than looking scraggly she seems fine, is eating well, bright & alert etc. her & my other hen from the same batch lay very occasionally if ever.

i had 2 others of this batch die recently, 1st of which had 1.5 weeks of indoor care after seeing her puffed up & poorly in the run. she had been egg bound 3 times in the past year or so but usually recovered after a warm bath & some oil in her vent. this time, she kept passing small lash eggs & watery stool. her keel was hard & swollen. i tried a few different antibiotics, & gave painkillers orally. at 1.5 weeks, she started refusing food & water, & didn't want to put pressure on her stomach by lying down. i had her put down to end her pain.

the 2nd hen to die was a few weeks later. she was dead on the coop floor one morning. she seemed to have died in her sleep & fallen from her perch but looked very healthy & had been behaving normally. i think this was an unconnected death of natural causes but worth mentioning.

& now 2 weeks after the 2nd death i find this lash egg & egg with no shell. i feed layers' pellets, my hens never touch oyster grit if it's in a dish by itself but i mix it into their pellets & sometimes scatter a handful across the run to encourage them to forage it. they don't care much for it no matter what i do, but they do love being given snail shells from the garden.

i'm not sure what all that says about their calcium levels so let me know if you think it could be a deficiency.

losing 2 out of 4 of my old hybrids so close together makes me wonder if they're just reaching the end of their lifespan. i have 5 other hens of different breeds who are all less than 1 y/o & they're all healthy & laying well. it's just the older hybrids.

please let me know what you think & if you have any ideas of what i should do. it was so hard trying to treat the last hen who laid the lash eggs & such a battle to let her go, i'm dreading the possibility of having another hen go through that.

 

[BobDBirdDog]

Seem I remember the soft egg occurring to me as well in my pheasnts once. Even got a pink egg and the birds are always green eggs.
In such I just upped the calcium (oyster shell) and slipped in some medicated feed "just in case".

#1- I suspect it occurs as the birds deplete their bodies of the calcium and have milked their bones of the needed self generating supply. That is just my conjecture 1,

#2- The other is simply a fluke in nature, she is producing before her body is ready to start laying. Kind of like warming up the cold car engine in the winter, it just needs to warm up first!
In humans... I use to just need one cup of coffee in the morning, now I need a gallon before I am fully aware/awale and get warmed up! LOL

Being a hybrid, I hear they will deplete faster if they are a heavy consistent layer, so it just may be her nearing her ending time. If so, it may be time to sharpen the AX and replace her with a new chick.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Hi, sorry for your losses. I think you're right to believe that a good part of the problem is simply age. In high-production hybrids, three years is not unusual for these birds to reach the end of their lifespan. Also, chickens are notorious for hiding their ilnesses and weaknesses until it's too late to do anything about them. This is a survival behavior. Hanging about looking miserable is a sure way to alert predators that you are on your way out, and easy, vulnerable prey. So chickens keep singing and dancing practically till they drop dead. This makes their keepers feel terribly guilty that they didn't notice anything, and didn't do anything to prevent death. But truly, there's often usually not much you can do by the time you see a problem.

If you are feeding a layer feed, they are proobably getting all the calcium they need. Adding any to the feed may do more harm than good. They leave the oyster shell alone because they don't need it. Truly, they know what they need. If you switched to an all-flock formula you would probably see them take the oyster shell.