Is this even possible?!?!

[Pampered chicken girl]

One of my hens went through a spell of laying very thin shelled eggs over night - 2 of them at a time. Took me a while to figure out who it was.

Before this she laid an egg every few days, then she started this frequent double egg with brittle thin shell thing. Really bothered me, but she was running around eating digging in dirt doing crazy chicken stuff... So I just kept an eye on her.

After about 6 weeks of this she went through a mini molt stopped laying and hasn't laid an egg since! This was a couple months ago. Which is fine with me.

Maybe if your gal goes through a molt it should stop her and maybe get her system back in order or stop laying all together.

Of note - her daughter lays infrequently also, maybe 3 eggs week, and has just a couple days ago decide to go broody (great another!). She is a barnyard mutt, and who knows what her mum is also!

The only hens that lay regularly for me are the Silkies! As with any and all animals, it's anything goes.

I shall follow you as I am keen to see how you get on with her

Thanks, she is still laying frequently. It's weird though because she can lay 4 eggs one day then 0 eggs the next then 1 or 2 or 3 on another the eggs are getting bigger less like pullet eggs now and are always hard good shelled and almost always dark yolks.

 

[NatJ]

Thanks, she is still laying frequently. It's weird though because she can lay 4 eggs one day then 0 eggs the next then 1 or 2 or 3 on another the eggs are getting bigger less like pullet eggs now and are always hard good shelled and almost always dark yolks.

That really sounds like 4 layers to me, and they are all taking days off on different schedules.

How many total chickens in the coop?
What breeds?
What color eggs does each one lay?

 

[Pampered chicken girl]

That really sounds like 4 layers to me, and they are all taking days off on different schedules.

How many total chickens in the coop?

8 laying hens, 1 rooster

What breeds?

1 EE, 1Barred Rock, 1blue orpington, 1black Copper Marans, 1 silkie hen, 1 EE/silkie cross (bird in question), 1 silkie rock (silkie/barred rock cross), 1 polish

What color eggs does each one lay?

Orp is not laying right now because of a illness that she just got over,
Barred Rock: Light brown
BCM: dark brown
EE: Light blue
EE/silkie: darker blue/green
Polish: white
Silkie: cream (broody right now)
Silkie rock: Light brown (broody right now)

 

[NatJ]

8 laying hens, 1 rooster

1 EE, 1Barred Rock, 1blue orpington, 1black Copper Marans, 1 silkie hen, 1 EE/silkie cross (bird in question), 1 silkie rock (silkie/barred rock cross), 1 polish

Orp is not laying right now because of a illness that she just got over,
Barred Rock: Light brown
BCM: dark brown
EE: Light blue
EE/silkie: darker blue/green
Polish: white
Silkie: cream (broody right now)
Silkie rock: Light brown (broody right now)

That is really odd.

Yes, if you are sure of the egg colors of all your birds, I see why you are convinced it must be this hen. Even if the EE laid some of them, 3 or 4 eggs from 2 birds would still be very unusual.

Do you collect eggs about the same time each day?
Any chance they are hiding eggs on some days for you to find on other days?

(I feel like there should be some obvious explanation other than "you have a weird chicken," but I'm not finding one.)

 

[Pampered chicken girl]

That is really odd.

Yes, if you are sure of the egg colors of all your birds, I see why you are convinced it must be this hen. Even if the EE laid some of them, 3 or 4 eggs from 2 birds would still be very unusual.

Do you collect eggs about the same time each day?
Any chance they are hiding eggs on some days for you to find on other days?

(I feel like there should be some obvious explanation other than "you have a weird chicken," but I'm not finding one.)

I collect eggs throughout the day usually in the morning and afternoon. My birds are in a run and coop so no possible way to hide eggs. I thinks she's dropped from space lol she has a "hawk face" to. I will get a picture tomorrow

 

[MysteryChicken]

Wow!

I almost stuck chicks under my 3 which wouldnt quit! I figured I would shove 2 a piece one night and taadaa look ma our golf balls hatched!!! But I don't really need or want more chickies

One day, I'll either have a hen adopt chicks, or hatch some out for me.

I've hatched chicks under broodies before, but this years bunch wasn't successful.

 

[WTCH Ho Dog]

So, actually, all tomatoes that are different from the ‘mother’ tomato are, technically, GMO.

There are tomatoes that are modified, termed ‘transgenic’, developed to ship and store longer (the Flavor Savr variety, if I’m not mistaken) - back in 1994. It was a flop, and didn’t go anywhere. Other than in Japan just recently, there have been no GMO tomatoes. And, the ones being developed? They are using existing tomato genes. Basically, just short cutting the breeding process. India has been working on a long shelf life tomato for quite some time now, have to go see how that is going. The same thing was done with Golden Rice, which was developed to give high yields of nutrient dense grain under highly stressful conditions, which in turn, reduced child death from malnutrition and starvation in developing countries. Over 90% of the corn grown in the US is GMO; I believe that less than 1% is of the sweet variety, and none goes to market directly.

There are also tons of studies which show zero harm to end consumers from any GMO products. There was the flounder/tomato brouhaha from years ago, where scientist (not farmers) tried to insert the antifreeze gene from a flounder into a tomato, to lengthen the season. Didn’t work, BTW, and was never marketed. Most gene transfers are between varieties of either the host species, or species closely related.

On a related but not super relevant note, Marica Woods wrote a paper quite awhile back worth reading. She is a plant hunter, and wrote about hunting tomato relatives in Chile. You can find it on the USDA website, I think you can just search ‘Tomato Trek Yields Chllean Treasure’.

As for the ‘super chicken’? While the idea that someone like me was poking chickens with needles, identifying and curating DNA, and injecting it back to produce a ‘super layer’, nah son, that’s not happening. Everyone here is chicken mad. SOMEONE would have known about it. I think the original thought of a spontaneous mutation is spot on. If you are horticultuerally inclined, look up the definition of a sport in roses. I grow OGR‘s (old garden roses, before nature and man genetically modified them into the lovely, reblooming hybrid teas, floribundas and grandifloras, and miniatures, climbers, shrubs, et al) and one of those ‘sports’ reverts back to its parent every year.

Where I’m going with all of this, is that as a rancher, I get tired of people blasting GMO’s without actually reading any peer reviewed studies, published in actual scientific journals, using unbiased research, that explains what it is, how it works, what it effects, and where it is. It’s not in your cornflakes. It’s not on your grocer’s vegetable shelf. You, as a consumer, cannot buy GMO corn, soy or wheat seeds for your home garden, and you wouldn’t want to anyway, as those are commercial varieties meant to be grown large scale. While I don’t like the widespread use of glyphosate, the tolerance to being the main GMO use, arguing against GMOs which shortcut the genetically modifying breeding programmes to produce a superfood variety in months instead of decades? Question that argument.

Confirmation bias is not helping anyone to gain actual knowledge.

 

[Pampered chicken girl]

So, actually, all tomatoes that are different from the ‘mother’ tomato are, technically, GMO.

There are tomatoes that are modified, termed ‘transgenic’, developed to ship and store longer (the Flavor Savr variety, if I’m not mistaken) - back in 1994. It was a flop, and didn’t go anywhere. Other than in Japan just recently, there have been no GMO tomatoes. And, the ones being developed? They are using existing tomato genes. Basically, just short cutting the breeding process. India has been working on a long shelf life tomato for quite some time now, have to go see how that is going. The same thing was done with Golden Rice, which was developed to give high yields of nutrient dense grain under highly stressful conditions, which in turn, reduced child death from malnutrition and starvation in developing countries. Over 90% of the corn grown in the US is GMO; I believe that less than 1% is of the sweet variety, and none goes to market directly.

There are also tons of studies which show zero harm to end consumers from any GMO products. There was the flounder/tomato brouhaha from years ago, where scientist (not farmers) tried to insert the antifreeze gene from a flounder into a tomato, to lengthen the season. Didn’t work, BTW, and was never marketed. Most gene transfers are between varieties of either the host species, or species closely related.

On a related but not super relevant note, Marica Woods wrote a paper quite awhile back worth reading. She is a plant hunter, and wrote about hunting tomato relatives in Chile. You can find it on the USDA website, I think you can just search ‘Tomato Trek Yields Chllean Treasure’.

As for the ‘super chicken’? While the idea that someone like me was poking chickens with needles, identifying and curating DNA, and injecting it back to produce a ‘super layer’, nah son, that’s not happening. Everyone here is chicken mad. SOMEONE would have known about it. I think the original thought of a spontaneous mutation is spot on. If you are horticultuerally inclined, look up the definition of a sport in roses. I grow OGR‘s (old garden roses, before nature and man genetically modified them into the lovely, reblooming hybrid teas, floribundas and grandifloras, and miniatures, climbers, shrubs, et al) and one of those ‘sports’ reverts back to its parent every year.

Where I’m going with all of this, is that as a rancher, I get tired of people blasting GMO’s without actually reading any peer reviewed studies, published in actual scientific journals, using unbiased research, that explains what it is, how it works, what it effects, and where it is. It’s not in your cornflakes. It’s not on your grocer’s vegetable shelf. You, as a consumer, cannot buy GMO corn, soy or wheat seeds for your home garden, and you wouldn’t want to anyway, as those are commercial varieties meant to be grown large scale. While I don’t like the widespread use of glyphosate, the tolerance to being the main GMO use, arguing against GMOs which shortcut the genetically modifying breeding programmes to produce a superfood variety in months instead of decades? Question that argument.

Confirmation bias is not helping anyone to gain actual knowledge.

So the only thing about my chicken was like 2 sentences. How does this help? Oh and thanks for the tomato information

 

[Fluffy Lambs]

I don't think its the same chicken laying them. I'm sure it doesn't take that long to put some food color on the ventlol

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I don't think its the same chicken laying them. I'm sure it doesn't take that long to put some food color on the ventlol

It really doesn't. Tilt the bird, drip drip drip, and you're done.