Soft Eggs, Why? Is she OK?

[brandibaby23]

I have a white hen, I have had her for about 3 months, she is free range with the rest of my chickens, I feed then the powdery scratch feed and egg layer crumbles, but every night she lays an egg........a soft paper thing jiggling ball of goo! I asked the guys at the feed store if maybe she needed some calcium but he said from what I am already feeding her and her being free range she should get what she needs, anyone else ever had this happen, I just wanna know she's ok. All my chickens are pets and eggs. Any ideas, very curious?

 

[mychickensrock]

brandi- I'm not sure why they do it, but we find them quite a bit in the coop. Most of the time, we find just the leathery shell because someone pecked it and ate the inside. I think our girls are pretty healthy. I guess as long as she doesn't lay them like that ALL the time, it'll probably be ok. Good luck!

 

[brandibaby23]

I have had this chicken about 3 or 4 months, and I have NEVER seen her lay a normal "hard" egg! So I just started to wonder about it. None of my other chickens do it or ever have done it. Huummmmmm

 

[mychickensrock]

Quote:
Is she 3 or 4 months old? Or do you know how old she is? Could be trying to work the "laying kinks" out.

 

[brandibaby23]

I do know she is older than 3 or 4 months but not sure, she was grown when I got her in july. I got her from a farm auction. They (I rescued 2 others) looked terrible. They all look beautiful now. The other hen even had a batch of chick a few weeks ago! Only one survived, but 3 of them drowned from my stupidity in a bucket of water, and the other four just died during the cold nights guess she wasn't a real good mother.

 

[posey]

brandibaby23
i just came through this so i will share what I know.

I have 2 hens who are Speckled Sussex and are about 8 months old. We took them from a lady who needed to get rid of them. At the time we got them they were 6 months old and had just started to lay. They didn't understand about a nest box. The first 2 days they each layed small pink eggs. Then they stopped for 2 months. I gave them layer crumbles and oyster shell - free choice. Finally a few weeks ago they started to lay again but they were the leathery shells, and they ate the stuff out of them.

I talked with Three Horses and she said that some hens do that when they are just starting to lay, until their bodies get going. She also said it can be a sign that they are not getting enough calcium to meet their needs. These hens were getting premium layer feed and should have been getting a good dose of calcium but clearly there was a problem.

She explained that when hens aren't getting enough calcium, their body will steal it from other places to help them form the egg shell. When they aren't forming the hard shell they can get egg bound and 'sometimes' they can die as a result.

Three Horses suggested that I add some of the oyster shell to the feed. She said that some hens won't eat it free choice. We started to mix some of the oyster shell in with the layer crumbles and stirred it up in the feeder. Within two days those hens were laying again. They are laying beautiful hard shelled eggs in the nest box everyday. We are going to continue to add the oyster shell to the feed because we have noticed that the hens don't seem to be eating it from the container we have out for them. We still keep some there for them but they are just ignoring it.

I hope that this helps
(c:

 

[brandibaby23]

Thank You

 

[posey]

You are welcome, so how are they doing now?