shell-less, fertilized, triple egg?!?

[graystar]

I found this egg in the nesting box this evening.

I have a laying Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington, and an Ameraucana (Easter Egger) that hasn't started laying yet.
My first thought was - did this strange egg become fertilized by the Ameraucana "hen"?

Here are more pics...

It looks as if there is some kind of flesh button at the back of this egg.

here's the dissection:

Slit open the first membrne. It looks like another egg popped out!

Slit open that egg - there's the yolk. I think it is fertilized.

Here it is up close.

This is the fleshy sac that was hanging off the original egg, slit open. Baby chicken?

same fleshy sack. What is this? and overy? the beginnings of a chick??

By the way, the membrane you see in the very first picture used to be partially covering the egg. After I pulled it off I started taking pictures.
The hens are all fine as far as I can see. Any thoughts? is this a triple egg? Was it fertilized or did some body parts come out of the poor hen?
what the heck is this?!?

 

[Amethyste]

Interesting pics...I would hazard a guess that most of that is bits of the reproductive system of the hen. It doesn't look like, to me anyway, the start of a chick of any type... just a bit of a messy screw-up of her egglaying system.

I have gotten something vaguely similar from a hen long ago who had egg laying issues for a long time...she was a pet tho so we let her do what she was going to do about that. She didn't last more than a few years before we found her dead in the coop one morning. I have often wondered if there was an issue with her insides, even if she acted totally normal other than only occasional laying and when she did lay the eggs were very similar to that in your pic.

 

[Momagain1]

ugh! I wish I hadnt seen these pics!!!

 

[kyeschicks]

what in the world lol try feeding they some oyster shells...hopefully someone will come and help you out!

 

[pgpoultry]

The last couple of pics. look like an ovary and tube to me.

I have had a couple of hen who have shed ovaries over the years....one was otherwise ill and died a few months later, but the other eventually went back to egg laying after a couple of weeks.

 

[summerjoy]

i just found similar with my California White this evening after work. i wish your post had more replies! did your hen have any problems after this or is she ok? i came home and she had some collapsed straw/cord thing hanging from her vent. i pulled it the rest of the way out b/c she didn't seem to be bothered by it. i threw it away and shortly after some stuff came out that looked like egg white. then later this evening she was walking around obviously trying to lay an egg or get something else out. out came an egg with more of the cord/straw on it - soft egg, no shell. broke membrane and the insides looked like a normal egg. she seemed to act fine the rest of the night. i've not disturbed her this morning yet. i'm trying to upload a pic to my page but it's not worked yet. check back if you can.

 

[graystar]

Quote:
I just found that egg in the nesting box. All the chickens look just fine, I'm not even sure who laid it!

 

[Jeffross1968]

Quote:
Yeah, little early in the day for this kind of thing

 

[graystar]

Any thoughts think about that carrot-like stringy thing in the yolk? What could that be? If the eggs are being fertilized, then I want to make sure we don't eat any until that problem is solved.

Also, why was the egg shell-less? I'm pretty sure the egg had three layers, what do you think? Finally, do you think the reason the ovary came out was that the egg was that big and (Possibly) fertilized?

I found this link that describes a little about the egg laying system. http://urbanext.illinois.edu/eggs/res17-layeggs.html

And this link about how an egg becomes fertilized. http://www.treeswallowprojects.com/cegglay.html

Any comments are welcome, I need to figure this out!

 

[debid]

You need a graphic photo warning.

This truly has nothing to do with fertilization. It's not a partially-developed chick, it's part of your bird's ovarian structure that has been ripped loose and pulled along with an abnormal egg. The yolk looks weird because it was damaged by this process.

A normal, fertilized egg looks almost identical to a normal, unfertilized egg until it's been incubated. The only visual difference is a tiny ring around the white speck on the egg. They also taste the same and lots of folks eat fertilized eggs (if you have a rooster, odds are that you have eaten fertilized eggs).

What you have pictured is NOT normal. Several things could happen. 1) your chicken may die of internal injury 2) your chicken may recover and resume normal laying 3) your chicken may continue to shed tissue and lay abnormal eggs... Unfortunately, nobody can tell you why it happened or whether it will happen again. It's simply a problem within the bird's reproductive system that may or may not resolve.