Leghorn drops her eggs on the ground daily

[Snack Giver]

My favorite bird, "QTip", our bossy and funny leghorn has an issue. She rarely makes it into the nest anymore! I'd say 75% of the time she just lays her daily egg on the ground in the run and then she walks away. I watched her do it today. Today all the birds were so excited to get out of the coop this AM and she was last to run out the door. She paused, squatted, and dropped her white egg (a bit thin-shelled BTW) and then ran away to catch up with the other girls. Is this normal? Always happens in the AM. Been going on for 3 months! She used to lay in the nest. All other 5 girls lay just fine in the nests. What can I do?

 

[un-named543]

Set a nest on the ground just for her with an egg in it to encourage her to lay in that one spot versus just anywhere on the ground?

 

[Fierlin1182]

It's pretty normal for a chicken to get used to not laying in the nest box. It's not a good habit for them to get into though, as the eggs can break if they fall onto something like a rock. Happened here before. It wasn't nice.
Anyway, what I found helped get my chickens back into the coop was to lock the hens in one morning. They sound like they're really bursting to get out and complain loudly, but eventually they'll go into the nest box, or in my case a dark corner of the coop, to lay their egg. After a couple of times doing that, they pretty much switched back to the coop.

 

[Snack Giver]

Our 6 birds usually lay at varied times in day. Ocassionally the leghorn will lay in the morning though. The others not. Would it be fair or good to only lock only her in for an additional hour? I think she's accidentally laying them a little early. The shells are always thin on the accidental ones. Yes they break when falling. One bird has now eaten the broken egg too, which scares me (I don't want new eating habits forming).

I wonder if excitement of the daily rush outside could cause an accidental early egg to fall out. The shells dont seem as formed as before.