mutant egg

[kittyfrog]

Howdy,
here's an egg found this morning

I was quite excited to see one of my girls who hasn't laid for about 3 weeks was finally in the egg box, but then this came out, I bet that wasn't comfortable!!

Before stopping laying 3 weeks back she had been laying a shellless egg every other day and then stopped all together, she has plenty of crushed egg shell and oyster shell so I figured she just wasn't into laying at the moment.

I don't think being off lay has anything to do with my birds fighting as I've never seen them doing so and they don't even seem to have a pecking order as they're so happy and there's ample resources and room for them, but if I had to guess I would have thought she is probably the top of the table.


anyone got any ideas what might be going on and what I can do as I would prefer to be getting an egg a day from each of my birds as I was up until recently. (three hybrid layers about 16 months old)


I look forward to your comments

Jason

 

[loverOFchickens]

That is weird.

Maybe if you look on the backyard poultry mag website?? They have a place where you can see old articles and I seem to remember that the "answer man" answered a case just like yours. The problem is I don't remember the answer.

If it is only happening to one hen I would think she is the one with the problem not your feeding methods etc. Is she molting?? I have had some of them lay the shell-less ones during a molt. If that was the case then she could have just stopped for the molt and this is just a funky 1st egg after molt. In any case I don't think you will see one like that again.

 

[fordmommy]

but

 

[Zahboo]

Did she grow new feathers? Hens lay weird weird eggs around moult, but I don't think she could have gotten moult done in 3 weeks.

 

[kittyfrog]

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Thanks for the idea, any chance you could point me in the direction of the right section of the website to look around in (ie a link) as I can't seem to find anything beyond the basics for beginners & thousands of forum threads

All my chickens' feathers are starting to look a quite ragged and I'm expecting them to come into moult soon but there only a few feathers around the run and the birds aren't looking patchy either, neither is there any sign of new feathers, so maybe moult has something to do with it but it isn't an obvious sign.