Okay, I know that it takes a while sometimes for the chicken to get the hang of laying eggs...I have a mixed age flock of 15. The oldest 3 are 27 weeks, then 7 at 22 weeks, and 5 at 17 weeks. One of the oldest has been laying for 6 weeks - never had a problem (except laying on the coop floor - but she started using the nesting box when the next layer showed her the ropes!
) I saw 4 of the next age group checking out the boxes, and that night had 4 eggs inside the boxes - all perfect
That was a little over a week ago. One of the oldest group started laying (pretty green/blue eggs) and is doing well in the box. But also in the past week I've had 4 incidents with soft shell eggs being dropped from the roost onto the droppings/poop board, once with two soft shelled eggs on the board. I'm kinda glad they were laid there - they could be a mess in the box! The chickens have free access to oyster shell, they are on Purina Layena crumbles, some treats (about 1 cup of scratch in the morning run for all 15 girls), and poss some leftover chicken nuggets or pasta from children's lunch. Since the other 6 seem to be laying fine, what else should I be doing/not doing to help them get it together? How long does it take for the egg laying "mechanism" to start working with precision? I'm assuming more than one of the younger ones have started with these soft shelled eggs, since I found two in the morning.

