Soft looking egg

[JacquelyninCali]

Hi all. I’m new to chickens and my hens are about 8 months old. Today i found the below pictured egg in one of the laying boxes. I have no idea which hen laid it, they’re all acting normal. Should i be concerned about this? It looks like a balloon with some white and yolk mostly inside but some has seeped out. Again all chickens are acting totally normal. Thanks for any advice or help!

 

[Alexandra Runner]

Looks like a soft-shell to me! Its nothing to be concerned about, don't worry. Do you keep oyster shell accessible to your hens?

 

[Alexandra Runner]

Oh wow, autocorrect deleted my apostrophe on "its." Once again proving artificial intelligence is not very intelligent.

 

[JacquelyninCali]

Looks like a soft-shell to me! Its nothing to be concerned about, don't worry. Do you keep oyster shell accessible to your hens?

Thanks for your response! I do have oyster shell for them and I also feed them egg shells.

 

[Alexandra Runner]

Of course! That's good! It might be just a glitch in a new layer, especially since they are so young. If the problem persists, I would get Calcium pills for humans from Wal-Mart (depending on where you are located, maybe not Wal-Mart?) and pop it into her beak, once you discover who it is. I had a Wyandotte who laid soft-shells frequently, but the pills solved the problem!

 

[JacquelyninCali]

Of course! That's good! It might be just a glitch in a new layer, especially since they are so young. If the problem persists, I would get Calcium pills for humans from Wal-Mart (depending on where you are located, maybe not Wal-Mart?) and pop it into her beak, once you discover who it is. I had a Wyandotte who laid soft-shells frequently, but the pills solved the problem!

Thanks I will definitely try that if it happens again!

 

[bowserduck]

We rescued our chickens but we had our ducks from little, when our runner first started laying we had a couple of odd ones! (We had one tiny egg and another one was soft just on one side) since then we’ve had nothing but perfect eggs! I think it’s common early on

(This picture was an egg from one day to the next- tiny then completely normal!)

 

[JacquelyninCali]

Thanks I will definitely try that if it happens again!

Hello. So we had a few weeks of normal eggs and last night she laid another soft one :-( Can you tell me the brand of calcium pills you get? are they hard or chewable? Thanks!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Sometimes a hen releases two yolks on the same day. If they are released at the same time you can get a double yolked egg. If the release is spread out by a bit she might lay two eggs in one day. A hen only makes a certain amount of shell material in a day so sometimes the second egg is soft-shelled or no shelled. Same kind of thing can happen to egg whites. Sometimes the second egg is smaller than the first.

I don't know if that hen is doing this, it is a possibility and not a sure thing. It could be a glitch in the internal egg making process. Sometimes a hen that does this will occasionally lay a double yolked egg, but not always. Often a hen doing this will skip laying the next day.

If all the other eggs are normal I'd consider this an individual hen problem, not a flockwide problem. How thick are the other eggshells? If they are all OK I would not treat the others because there is nothing wrong with them to treat. You don't want to mess them up. If you can identify which hen occasionally does this (might not be easy) you can certainly try treating her.

If things like this happen but happen extremely rarely I tend to accept them. The egg laying process is fairly complex and things can happen. I feel that we are all entitled to an occasional oops. But if it were a regular occurrence I'd try to identify which hen to try to rectify the issue. My main concern would be that an egg like this could train a hen to be an egg eater, a hen that purposely opens an egg to eat it.

I would not start panicking yet. It could easily be a young layer learning how to lay. It may be something else entirely. But if it becomes a regular occurrence I might start trying to identifying her.

 

[JacquelyninCali]

Sometimes a hen releases two yolks on the same day. If they are released at the same time you can get a double yolked egg. If the release is spread out by a bit she might lay two eggs in one day. A hen only makes a certain amount of shell material in a day so sometimes the second egg is soft-shelled or no shelled. Same kind of thing can happen to egg whites. Sometimes the second egg is smaller than the first.

I don't know if that hen is doing this, it is a possibility and not a sure thing. It could be a glitch in the internal egg making process. Sometimes a hen that does this will occasionally lay a double yolked egg, but not always. Often a hen doing this will skip laying the next day.

If all the other eggs are normal I'd consider this an individual hen problem, not a flockwide problem. How thick are the other eggshells? If they are all OK I would not treat the others because there is nothing wrong with them to treat. You don't want to mess them up. If you can identify which hen occasionally does this (might not be easy) you can certainly try treating her.

If things like this happen but happen extremely rarely I tend to accept them. The egg laying process is fairly complex and things can happen. I feel that we are all entitled to an occasional oops. But if it were a regular occurrence I'd try to identify which hen to try to rectify the issue. My main concern would be that an egg like this could train a hen to be an egg eater, a hen that purposely opens an egg to eat it.

I would not start panicking yet. It could easily be a young layer learning how to lay. It may be something else entirely. But if it becomes a regular occurrence I might start trying to identifying her.

I know the hen who is doing this. I only have 6 hens, the other 5 have had no issues with their eggs and have hard shells. I had thought of taking the advice of another poster on here to give just that hen a calcium supplement. The hen laying the soft eggs is acting completely fine other wise...happy, eating, drinking etc.