Overall quality of eggs seems bad.

[serama mamma]

I have a flock of 7 laying hens that I've raised from a week old - GLW, EE's, OE's, Australorp/Welsummer. They are in their second year. We also have 3 (2 hens and 1 roo) seramas. Everyone runs together and they do fine.

I feed a mix of crumbles and pellets so everyone can find something to eat (18%). I offer oyster shell separately. They free range for 3-5 hours a day in the evenings. And also get organic scraps from the garden. Plus all the rainbow chard they like to sneak. The run size is 8x10, and the coop is 4x8. There are 6 nest boxes. I dewormed them this past winter. My husband puts out scratch for them in bare spots in the yard a few times a week.

We live in Alabama, so I'm sure heat is playing a part to the occasional soft shelled eggs. But the majority of my issues or questions I have is what is going on on the inside of the eggs.

Almost every egg has meat spots, which I know is normal, but nearly every single egg, from every single hen? Whites that are separate from the yolk. Blood streaks on the yolks. Soft shelled eggs.
One hen in particular lays pinkish eggs, over the last month or so have lots of calcium on the outside, like bumps and mounds. Nothing too extreme. But we make sure these ladies have the best of everything, and they are treated like pets. I just wish the eggs were better. The yolks are gorgeous orange/yellow. But that's the beginning and end of the good quality. Good thing they are sweethearts.

Any tips would be appreciated.

 

[I Love Layers]

I have found that as hens get older the quality of there eggs goes down, it all depends on the birds. It seems you take really good care of them so I can not see what would case this other then old age

 

[azygous]

Here's an opposite comment - egg quality doesn't need to fall off with age.

You might try fermented feed. It maximizes the nutrients the hens derive from the feed. I have six-year old hens laying regularly and good quality eggs on fermented feed.

 

[aart]

Is your feed fresh?
Manufacturing date should be on bag somewhere,
on nutrition tag or printed on end band as it's sewn on.
Old feed, more than a couple months, can be low in nutrients from degradation.

You might also try cutting out all the extras for a few weeks, see if that makes a difference.

Did the quality go down as the heat went up?
Might give them a dose of Sav-A-Chik vitamins/electrolytes.

 

[lazy gardener]

I have a flock of 7 laying hens that I've raised from a week old - GLW, EE's, OE's, Australorp/Welsummer. They are in their second year. We also have 3 (2 hens and 1 roo) seramas. Everyone runs together and they do fine.

I feed a mix of crumbles and pellets so everyone can find something to eat (18%). I offer oyster shell separately. They free range for 3-5 hours a day in the evenings. And also get organic scraps from the garden. Plus all the rainbow chard they like to sneak. The run size is 8x10, and the coop is 4x8. There are 6 nest boxes. I dewormed them this past winter. My husband puts out scratch for them in bare spots in the yard a few times a week.

We live in Alabama, so I'm sure heat is playing a part to the occasional soft shelled eggs. But the majority of my issues or questions I have is what is going on on the inside of the eggs.

Almost every egg has meat spots, which I know is normal, but nearly every single egg, from every single hen? Whites that are separate from the yolk. Blood streaks on the yolks. Soft shelled eggs.
One hen in particular lays pinkish eggs, over the last month or so have lots of calcium on the outside, like bumps and mounds. Nothing too extreme. But we make sure these ladies have the best of everything, and they are treated like pets. I just wish the eggs were better. The yolks are gorgeous orange/yellow. But that's the beginning and end of the good quality. Good thing they are sweethearts.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Azygous and Aart beat me to the punch: Check your mill date. If feed is older than 6 weeks old, it's on it's way to being stale. And fermented feed will do a lot to improve your bird's health, which will translate to better eggs. I also suggest that you start giving them multi vitamins. Try Poultry Nutri Drench, or see what other products are carried at your feed store.

 

[aart]

Check your mill date. If feed is older than 6 weeks old, it's on it's way to being stale.

Around here, and many other places I'm sure, I'd be hard put to find the formula I want to use(pur flock raiser) at less than 6 weeks, not enough people buy it to keep stock refreshed, am lucky to find less than 2 months. Even going to a 'real' feed mill, where they may grind the grains 'fresh', and that's what date they put on it the finished bag, the premix(vit/min/AA) they add?.... well, you'll never see the MFG date on that.

 

[serama mamma]

I have found that as hens get older the quality of there eggs goes down, it all depends on the birds. It seems you take really good care of them so I can not see what would case this other then old age

Is 2 years old considered aged? Genuinely curious. We raised meat birds and bantams growing up, we never really kept up with actual laying hens.

 

[serama mamma]

Here's an opposite comment - egg quality doesn't need to fall off with age.

You might try fermented feed. It maximizes the nutrients the hens derive from the feed. I have six-year old hens laying regularly and good quality eggs on fermented feed.

Can you point me in a direction of feeding fermented food? We are big on fermented food for ourselves, and we make a lot of things ourselves. So I'd be very interested in this.

 

[serama mamma]

Is your feed fresh?
Manufacturing date should be on bag somewhere,
on nutrition tag or printed on end band as it's sewn on.
Old feed, more than a couple months, can be low in nutrients from degradation.

You might also try cutting out all the extras for a few weeks, see if that makes a difference.

Did the quality go down as the heat went up?
Might give them a dose of Sav-A-Chik vitamins/electrolytes.

We've had more weird eggs as the heat has gone up - definitely more soft shelled eggs. I make them tubs of ice with chunks of veggies or fruits in them, and was going to make them some electrolyte water today. I just threw out the bags, so I don't know how fresh it is, but it didn't smell moldy or anything so I didn't check the bag that close. I wondered about the "extras" if that might throw stuff off.

Honestly though, these hens have always had weird eggs off and on, ALWAYS with the meat spots - out of 7 eggs, 5 or more have them - which I figured went along with their systems maturing. We've had eggs with NO shell, not even soft, just yolk and white, under the roosts when they were real new to laying. Slab sided eggs, soft shells, you name it. Chalked it up to working the kinks out of their systems. The heat has seemed to increase all matter of weirdness for them. They are super happy ladies though.

 

[serama mamma]

Azygous and Aart beat me to the punch: Check your mill date. If feed is older than 6 weeks old, it's on it's way to being stale. And fermented feed will do a lot to improve your bird's health, which will translate to better eggs. I also suggest that you start giving them multi vitamins. Try Poultry Nutri Drench, or see what other products are carried at your feed store.

I'll definitely try that. Thank you!