Shell-less eggs for 8 weeks and eating the evidence!

[erin417]

Finally! After months of not getting her beautiful blue eggs we finally have discovered the problem. Our 7 months old Americana "stopped" laying her eggs, last recorded was March 2! (First egg was Feb 7th) Did a lot of research, stopped the kitchen scraps, Organic Layena only! -- confirmed that she has minimum stress (she's one of 3 beloved chicken pets), older kids and 16 year old dog in the suburbs, Summer is on the way, apparently in good health, not molting, oyster shells, free-ranging in my backyard. So where are the eggs? Well on Sat I finally see yolk and white remains and 3 - toed footprints on the patio...no blue shell however. Sun. reveals the same clues -- so today I wait. She goes into the nest to lay, as she always does, at 11am ish. I wait patiently outside with abook but to no avail. I keep them in their run all day and finally let them out right before sundown --she squats, the other two run around her backside and she drops a half-formed rubber egg. Is there any hope for my young, much loved flock of 3? They're all egg-eaters and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Stew is not an option for us either. Thanks for any insight!

 

[Sunny Side Up]

Perhaps you should separate this hen for a while, at least so the other hens stop thinking of her as a candy dispenser. They're not eating each other's eggs too, are they? Or just this one's shell-less ones?

Then you can concentrate on giving her a lot of calcium supplements, oyster shell grit, egg shells, yogurt or cottage cheese, etc.

There are ways to design nest boxes so the eggs roll back to a place where the hens cannot reach them, maybe you could use something like that so your hens don't have eggs around to tempt them to eat them.
I wish you success, and