soft eggs

[lbckaetzel]

Do I need to add something to my girls diet to stop soft shell eggs?

 

[chicmom]

Hi there! If you are feeding them layer feed, that is usually enough nutrition to provide strong eggshells. Alot of people provide a dish of crushed oyster shells on the side, which will give your hens that extra calcium they need if they've been laying soft shelled, or even shell-less eggs.

If your hens are new layers, sometimes they will lay soft shells, or even an egg with just the membrane and no shell. It's quite common.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Depends. Is it just one hen or all of them with soft shelled eggs? What are you feeding them now?

If it is all your hens, then yes you need to make a change. If you are not feeding layer, then you need to switch to layer. If most of what they eat is layer, it should have enough calcium in it so you don't need to use anything else. If they eat decent quantities of things other than layer, they may not be getting enough calcium so you can offer oyster shell on the side. If the egg shells are soft for all the hens, you need to do something. It is kind of hard to suggest what if I don't know what you are doing now, but offering oyster shell on the side is never a bad thing.

If it is only one hen and the egg shells are hard for all the others, there could be a few different reasons but if is specific to that one hen and not all the others. If a hen is just starting to lay, it is not unusual for her to lay a soft shelled egg or two before her internal egg laying factory works out the kinks. If it persists for two weeks or more, you have a problem other than a pullet just working out the kinks. This link may help you with that.

Good luck!

Soft shelled Eggs
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/publi...ndbook/16/thinshelled-eggs-and-shellless-eggs

 

[dldolan]

Hi,
I have some five month old new layers, and I have gotten two soft-shelled eggs in the past 10 days, but that after days of good eggs! (Two days I even got all five eggs! Good girls!) Seems pretty random??? But is this normal when they are new to producing?