shellless eggs

[rtcritters]

One of my hens are layinging eggs with no hard shell . they always have oyster shells in front of them and clean water and food. And appear healthy and happy. I always find it not in the nest but rather outside the box somewhere broken but none of my hens have tried eating it thank goodness. Don't want them getting a taste for their eggs. Any suggestions?

 

[johanssonmel]

I was just about to make an almost identical post. I apparently have one hen who has begun consistently laying shelless eggs.

For a while I would find one here and there--on the chickenhouse floor, out in the yard--but it's settled into a regular, consistent pattern. Every morning I find a single shelless egg in the same place underneath the roosts on the poop board.

I think I've got the guilty party identified, based on who I know is laying normal eggs and where everyone tends to roost. It's one of my Ameraucanas.

They're just over a year old. I feed them layer from Countryside Organics and they have free access to oyster shell and grit. They have a large yard with sand substrate that I keep scrupulously clean (seriously--I go out there and clean up poop several times a day. It's obsessive.) Most days I turn them out to forage in the back yard.

The rest of them are laying good, hard-shelled eggs, 5-6 per day from 7 hens.

No nighttime disturbances--we've got a neighborhood fox that comes around occasionally, but the coop and yard are more heavily secured than Quantico.

Any ideas? Is this possibly disease-related, and if so, is it treatable?

 

[rtcritters]

Sounds exactly like mine. Wish I could identify which of mine. I have Brahma and they all look exactly alike.

 

[johanssonmel]

I'm thinking that the problem isn't exactly the shellessness (hence, no nutritional issue) but rather that the hen is laying at the wrong point in the egg-production cycle. The egg develops overnight, and she's just releasing it way too early.

 

[rtcritters]

And what would cause her to release it early. Anyway off stopping this?

 

[johanssonmel]

No idea

So far my approach has been to wait it out and see if it just resolves itself.

 

[Justyolking]

I'm just wondering if the situation resolved for your hen. I had the same issue with an Ameracauna, and she seems to be getting back in sync. She is laying regular eggs with shells this week, after about a month or so of eggs in various states of shell-lessness.

 

[rtcritters]

It appears to have gotten better but every so often I will find a shell less one.

 

[johanssonmel]

Same thing happened with me--the frequency tapered way off. I still get the occasional one.

 

[Beekissed]

Tis the season and it's normal to have some laying abnormalities in hens past their first year when laying season starts and also when it goes into decline. Just the reproductive parts all getting lined out for peak laying season. In really old hens who have tapered off laying, even in peak season, it could start to signal laying issues that result in discomfort and even death from internal laying and/or egg peritonitis. Very old hens who start having laying issues should be culled before they have to experience suffering from it all. Production breeds are more prone to having laying issues, even as young as 2-3 yrs of age because they burn out rather quickly.

Every year in the spring and then around molting season we get posts about such things and also about egg eating and both are absolutely normal behaviors when linked with certain times of year and they all go away with time...give it 2-3 wks and all the laying weirdness goes away and so does the egg eating. No amount of increasing proteins or calcium or trying to break egg eaters changes these things...it just happens.

Just be patient and wait it out and it all goes back to normal in a few weeks. The chickens eating their own eggs doesn't "give them a taste for it"...they are BORN with a taste for eggs. Yolk is their earliest nutrition and it's a natural and healthy thing for them to like eating eggs. It's natural instinct to keep the nests clean, to eat eggs that are not going to hatch due to infertility~many broodies eat the dud eggs in a clutch to keep the rest of the eggs from being exposed to rotting eggs.