OK. My mind is totally blown! What is this!?!?

[New Chick In The Backyard]

I am new to chickens. I have one hen that is laying and the rest are young pullets that are very close to the general age of laying. I found a big piece of what looks like skin. I had no idea what it was so I smelled it and it smelled like raw chicken so I know it came from one of my chickies. What in the WORLD is this? I hope they are ok. Please help ASAP.
On a probable unrelated note my ISA Brown hen that is laying is so skinny and sometimes she lays eggs everyday and when it get extremely hot outside she stopped laying eggs for 8 days, went back to laying about an egg a day. Recently layed 2 eggs in one day and none the next. Is this related? I have enclosed a photo of something weird she did in the coop. She has nest boxes that she lays in, one in particular that she favors but sometime between last night and this afternoon I noticed that all the hay has been pushed to the back of the coop like shes trying to make a nest?? Any info would be appreciated.

 

[MissE]

Is it a soft shell?

 

[NatJ]

I found a big piece of what looks like skin.

I think it might be the "shell" of a softshell egg. That would be a thick membrane with maybe a tiny bit of calcium on the outside to make it stiffer. It would have originally been all around the egg, but got ripped open and the chickens ate the egg. The membrane is a pretty consistent thickness all over.

If the thing you found has lumps or thick parts, then it is something else and I don't know what to say.

But if it is the "shell" (membrane) of a softshell egg, and if it only happens once, you don't need to worry.
If it happens regularly, then you will need to make sure the chicken who produced it gets plenty of calcium, and that may or may not fix it. Apparently some hens have trouble absorbing calcium, but that is less common than hens that just don't get enough calcium in their diet.

I have one hen that is laying and the rest are young pullets that are very close to the general age of laying.

Food - I provide all of them chicken starter at all times. My laying hen gets starter and laying pellet and she chooses what she wants to eat. In the morning i put all the food pales out so they eat what they want, mostly starter.

That sounds fine to me, as long as they also have oyster shell or eggshell or another source of calcium.

Chick starter should be fine for them all.
If they are almost ready to lay, then layer feed would also be fine for them all.
Allowing them to choose chick starter or layer food should also be fine.

I occasionally give them scratch and meal worms for treats. I have been recently giving them watermelon, corn, green beans, celery, and yogurt. They are just now interested in that kind of thing.

If they are having problems, I would stop all of those other things for now.
If they are healthy with NO problems, then feel free to continue whatever you've been doing that works.

In hot weather, you can get some of their chicken food wet with cool water, and most chickens seem to really like it. (No need to limit the amount of wet food they eat, just don't let it sit around and spoil.)

Do you mind elaborating because I thought I finally had the food situation figured out. Why can't they have an occasional treat?

Some people have very strong opinions about feeding ONLY the appropriate kind of commercial feed, and some other people are much more relaxed about it, and some people feel strongly that they MUST feed a selection of other things. Ultimately, you have to be the one who makes the decision for your chickens. But no matter what you decide, someone is sure to tell you that you're doing it wrong.

 

[CluckerFamily]

I have given her - what was advised to me as natural dewormer, D.E. and apple cidar vinegar which I only gave her a couple times.. Do you think I need someting else? Are worms suspected here? I was trying not to use harsh chemicals. A dewormer that the co-op suggested, they said it would take paint off of things and that sounded horrific to me.

As soon as people told me in April to only give scratch as a treat, I stopped. I actually have been feeling bad that I only give it to them every 2 or 3 days and not a lot. What do you think about that?

DE and apple cider vinegar won’t kill any worms if they have worms.

 

[NatJ]

Ok Kiki. I suspected that MIGHT be going on because they act like they don't really care and are in a hurry to be done with me. I see now they are jerks.

They might not be jerks, just people who know only a little bit about the subject, and some of what they think they know is wrong. They were probably hired to sell stuff (ring up people's purchases), and then found that people keep asking questions about stuff they don't really know.

About the chick starter-- it probably says "medicated" in big letters, and the name of the medicine in small letters (amprolium, most likely). That is not an antibiotic, but someone who just sees the name might guess it was. It is really something to prevent coccidiosis, which can be deadly in small chicks but is pretty rare in older chickens, so your current birds should be fine without it.

 

[NatJ]

I can never get her to eat the baked crushed egg shells that I give her. She is so disinterested. She wont eat the oyster shell I bought her and I suspect its because she is so pick and the pieces are HUGE. I don't know what they were thinking when they didnt make the oyster shell pieces smaller.

The amount of oyster shell or eggshell a chicken needs each day is fairly small. You often won't notice them eating it, even when they are getting enough.

I don't know how large your oyster shell pieces are, but chickens often swallow things that look pretty large to us.

Is there more calcium in layer feed?

Yes. That is what makes it layer feed.
Most chicken feeds are actually very similar to each other.

Chick starter has a bit more protein (does not hurt any age chicken.)

Layer feed has more calcium (high enough for laying hens, but the level is so high it can be dangerous to chickens that are not laying eggs, if they eat it for a long time. The harm seems to depend a bit on the individual chicken-- if you feed only layer feed to a large number of growing chicks, or roosters of any age, some will show problems, some may have problems that are not obvious, and some will seem completely fine.)

I just assumed chickens were like humans and dogs. The more the diet is varied the better the health is.

People, dogs, and chickens are a bit different in that respect.

For people: we do feed people an unvaried diet for several months after they are born (breast milk or infant formula.) We know pretty well what they need at that age. After that, no-one has bothered to make a single food that is meant to provide everything a person needs. And there's no way you could get a group of people to eat such a diet for a long time, eating nothing else, to see which ones develop definiencies. A varied diet means that people are more likely to get what they need, partly because people's tastes can change a little when they need more of one food or another (which food tastes "best" can change a bit.) It's not perfect, but it works reasonably well for most people.

For dogs, it's pretty easy to put a dozen dogs in individual kennels and feed them measured amounts of just one diet. If nothing is obviously wrong after 6 months or so, you can assume that food is fairly good for dogs. That means scientists probably know MORE about what a dog really needs than they know for people!

For chickens, people raise thousands and millions of them, and this gives very GOOD information about what a chicken needs. If the normal death rate is 2 chicks per hundred, and you change something in the food and the death rate goes up to 3 per hundred or down to 1 per hundred, you can see that you've made a difference. A backyard flock with a dozen chickens will never notice that level of difference. Or if changing the protein by half a percent makes egg production go up or down by 2 percent, it will be noticed in a large commercial flock but not a small backyard flock.

Commercial chicken food that is designed for chicks, and for laying hens, is intended to keep those birds productive while they grow up, and for a year or so while they lay eggs. That requires them to stay alive and fairly healthy. That is also a much longer, more effective test period than what is used for dog nutrition or human nutrition.

(Nutrition for pigs, mice, and rats is probably understood just as well, because those animals are also raised in large numbers-- pigs on farms, rats and mice in labs-- and fed a "complete" diet. Most other animals are either raised in smaller numbers, or fed things like hay that are not as easy to compute nutritional values for.)

I am not someone that believes dogs should only get "dog food" and nothing else

Personally, I have been feeding chickens for years. They have always gotten a complete chicken food and also table scraps, kitchen waste, weeds from the garden, and so forth. The chicken food would always be available free choice, but they would eat more or less of it depending on what else they were offered each day.

But when someone new to chickens is having a problem, I strongly recommend that they feed only chicken food while they resolve the problem. Feeding other things takes a bit of experience (I learned from my Mom, who learned from her Dad who learned from...) So a new person can more quickly solve their other problems if they are not learning about an appropriate chicken diet at the same time. And some problems really are diet-related, so feeding just chicken food will solve those problems.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Lots of opinions here. Here's mine, for what it's worth. I agree with @NatJ in post #30 when she identified that "thing" as the exterior membrane of a shell-less egg. Either the hen that laid it, or she and the other hens, ate the contents. I don't advise worming your hen with over-the-counter products. Wormers are poisons and you shouldn't poison your hen for no reason. Most worms and worm eggs are microscopic. If you're going to worm, treat for what worms your hen has. Find out what your vet charges for a fecal float test, it shouldn't be much. You can test all your flock at once and then you'll know whether they need wormed and what kind of wormer to use.

I don't know if worms cause soft shells but I doubt it. More likely, it was caused by your hen's age and general condition. Good luck with her! ❤

 

[casportpony]

It might be its vent

No, it's not the vent, it's a shell-less egg.

 

[Ascholten]

Chickens love clover. If you let them pig out on clover, then they wont eat as much layer feed as they need because they are full of clover. This can rob them of the nutrients they need, since clover does not provide everything they need. So yes, if they focus mainly on table scraps, they may NOT be getting all the nutrients they need. They will generally go for what tastes best, not what IS best.

Aaron

 

[Ldolan]

Omgggggggggg