Help to figure out which freerange hen is laying defective eggs?

One Chick Two · Aug 27, 2014

Hi everybody,

How can we figure out which freerange hen is laying some defective eggs in the henhouse nestboxes?

We have 68 freerange hens who go in and out of the henhouse all day long. We have seen a few eggs without shells, but are more concerned about eggs that seem to have yolk scrambled/ mixed within the egg white as if it had been scrambled in the shell. The yolk isn't separate, and those eggs taste not right.

We need to figure out who is doing this quickly to see if it is a medical condition that can be straightened out. These eggs are not good surprises!

Thanks for any suggestions...

lazy gardener · Aug 27, 2014

The only way you can find out is to trap nest, and check every egg laid. An other option, would to put food coloring on the vents of your birds, perhaps to correspond to a colored zip tie. Once you get it narrowed down to a certain "group" of birds, then you can further continue to weed out "non-issue" birds until you find the guilty party. You might check the threads for egg abnormalities. With so many birds, it sounds like an almost impossible task.

islandgirl82 · Aug 27, 2014

lazy gardener said: ↑

The only way you can find out is to trap nest, and check every egg laid. An other option, would to put food coloring on the vents of your birds, perhaps to correspond to a colored zip tie. Once you get it narrowed down to a certain "group" of birds, then you can further continue to weed out "non-issue" birds until you find the guilty party. You might check the threads for egg abnormalities. With so many birds, it sounds like an almost impossible task.
Click to expand...

Or divide up your flock into smaller groups and once you figure out which group the funky eggs are coming from you can let the rest of the groups go back to full free ranging and focus on weeding her out of the remaining group. No matter how you decide to go about finding her, unfortunately it seems like a long process is unavoidable.

One Chick Two · Aug 29, 2014

lazy gardener said: ↑

The only way you can find out is to trap nest, and check every egg laid. An other option, would to put food coloring on the vents of your birds, perhaps to correspond to a colored zip tie. Once you get it narrowed down to a certain "group" of birds, then you can further continue to weed out "non-issue" birds until you find the guilty party. You might check the threads for egg abnormalities. With so many birds, it sounds like an almost impossible task.
Click to expand...

islandgirl82 said: ↑

Or divide up your flock into smaller groups and once you figure out which group the funky eggs are coming from you can let the rest of the groups go back to full free ranging and focus on weeding her out of the remaining group. No matter how you decide to go about finding her, unfortunately it seems like a long process is unavoidable.
Click to expand...

Thank you both. These are great suggestions. Found one with issues already. Looked at everyone's vent, and anyone who had redness, vent issues, or anything else went into this pen. Now we will do the food color. Many thanks!!!

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