My chickens eggs have shrunk

[claireree]

Have I 5 chickens, sorry but not sure on the breed, 3 I class as normal battery hens and 1 is a speckled one and the other has no feathers on the back of his neck. Anyway
upto now the 3 battery hens lay a egg each day but the speckled who has only recently started laying only lays every now and then but my other one was laying quite well and now seems to have stopped and today she seems to have gone backwards and layed a tiny egg.

The other thing I have noticed is the battery hens back end is all nice and clean but the other 2 their back end is quite messy is this normal

Any ideas, please help or if you need more information please let me know.

 

[Judy]

The tiny egg is just a glitch in the egg laying machinery, called a fart egg. No biggy.

The back ends is another matter. Not sure what you mean by messy; you need to examine them closely if you have not done so. There was a thread on here quite recently about battery hens pecking other's bottoms to the point of killing them. You need to separate the peckers soon if there is a wound there, or you are likely to lose hens, as once there is blood, any chicken will peck at the blood.

If it's just poop, you may need to clean it (soak with soap and water) then trim the feathers around the vent.