One chicken, Four soft shells, 48 hours.

Cherbe

Chirping
May 17, 2021
37
131
89
Ireland
Our little lady Tikka has not had the best two days. In a 48 hour period we have gotten FOUR soft shelled eggs from her.

The first I would consider shell less, second was completely soft rubber like, third was more solid on top and bottom with a soft rubber band in between and the final had a paper thin shell, crackable but so fragile.

She's in good humour for the most part, yesterday between he first and second she looked uncomfortable and was lethargic but when the second dropped she was back to herself.

She's a new layer, been laying for 5 weeks. In that time we've gotten a good few double yokes, varying sizes (50-100g), odd shapes, bands, mottling.

Is this normal for a new layer, our others had no issues like this. I feel so bad for the little thing.

She's on layers feed pellets, kitchen scraps and gets occasional treat of black soldier fly. Oh and she helps herself to our raspberries and strawberries.

I just got some limestone grit today that I will give them to hopefully boost their calcium intake.

Any advice would be appreciated.

We're currently waiting to see what she leaves in the nest box today. Fingers crossed for some good news.
 
Could be start up glitches.....or she's a 'lemon'.
Only time will tell.
What breed is she?
Is the "mottling" on the shell or the yolk?
Usually when only one bird is having problems, it's the bird not the diet.
The extra calcium might help tho, some need more than others.
 

She's a mottled Ranger and such a funny little chicken!

All her eggs are good on the inside, just the shell. Sometimes the shell is almost patchy.

The others are doing good, laying consistently and all normal for the most part. I'll keep and eye on her, if any chicken was going to be a lemon, it would definitely be her 😂

I wonder if the soft eggs continue should I give her a calcium/D3 supplement for a few days?
 
I agree with Aart. When I have a problem I want to know if it is an individual chicken problem or a flock wide problem. I don't want to treat the whole flock and maybe mess them up if I don't have to.

A pullet or hen has certain triggers that tell her when to release a yolk to make an egg. That should be no more than one a day but sometimes they have problems with that. It is not that strange for a pullet to have this type of start-up problems but usually they get over it in a week or two. Five weeks is a long time but you never know.

If a pullet releases two yolks at the same time you can get double-yolked eggs. If the release is separated you can get two or even more eggs in a day. The pullet/hen typically only makes a certain amount of shell material in a day so the extra eggs are often thin-shelled, soft-shelled, or no shell. It's not that she is not eating enough calcium to cover one egg a day but she's just not making enough shell material for two or three eggs.

I don't know of any way to stop a hen from releasing multiple yolks if her system is set up that way. The only thing I can come up with to do is to supplement her calcium and hope it helps and give her more time to outgrow it.

Good luck.
 
This happened/happens to my hens time to time. I noticed it happens most in new layers when there's stress amongst the flock. My flock has occasional flare-ups of MG, which can be triggered by the extreme temperatures or new flock introductions. When I notice sniffling, there's usually soft eggs to follow. Best advice I have is to keep them as least-stressed as possible, making sure they're getting enough calcium, nutrients, and liquids, and watching for any other signs of illness.
 
This happened/happens to my hens time to time. I noticed it happens most in new layers when there's stress amongst the flock. My flock has occasional flare-ups of MG, which can be triggered by the extreme temperatures or new flock introductions. When I notice sniffling, there's usually soft eggs to follow. Best advice I have is to keep them as least-stressed as possible, making sure they're getting enough calcium, nutrients, and liquids, and watching for any other signs of illness.

That's really interesting, we've had strange weather the past two weeks for Ireland - We got up to a nice toasty 30C for a week followed by thunderstorms and awful rain. I wonder if she was stressed by it all.

We've had four days of perfect shelled eggs and they've all been of average size so I'm really happy. Hopefully, it was just a short term glitch.
 

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