The one not laying yet is pecking butt feathers off my 1st layer.
The one doing the pecking is laying soft shell eggs and the others eat it.
So the one not laying is laying soft shelled eggs? The head just spins!
Whether she is laying or not doesn't change anything to me as far as her pecking feathers. The soft shelled eggs are a totally different issue.
It is not unusual for a chicken to eat an egg that is already open. That does not make her an egg-eater. An egg-eater is a chicken that purposely opens an egg to eat it. Eating a soft-shelled egg could possibly lead to them learning to open an egg but I don't think you are there yet as they are not opening their own eggs.
How hard the eggshells of the two that are not soft-shelled? If they are OK then you do not have a problem with how they are eating or how you are managing them. It is an individual chicken question.
It is not unusual for a pullet that is just starting to lay to lay weird eggs. The internal egg making process is pretty complicated. Sometimes it takes a pullet a few days to get all of the bugs out of that system. So if it has been less than a week or even two weeks I would not worry that much about being a permanent problem. In my flock I give them some time to work it out.
But I'd suggest you get some calcium supplements from your pharmacy and put one pill a day in her beak. She should swallow it. That might solve your soft eggshell problem or it might not. It depends on what her specific reason for her soft-shelled eggs are.
Since the others are eating her eggs I would not delay, you don't want them to learn to open eggs. I'd also isolate her for a few days to see if the eggshells get harder. I consider the potential for egg eating to be much more serious than a little feather picking.
