Strange Egg

[HenMcGhie]

So one of my chickens laid this today. There's no soft spots. Everything's hard like an egg shell should be with the exception of the strange split. Does anyone know what happened here or what may have caused this?

 

[aart]

Probably just a glitch in the old egg machine....happens sometimes.
Funky eggs can be caused by a stress or a scare or a new/old egg layer.

 

[Pennychickens]

My hens will lay really funny looking eggs now an then too.

 

[sumi]

I will explain what I think happened here, but first, let me explain how the egg is formed:

An egg is formed over a period of about 25 hours. 30 minutes after the last egg was laid, a mature yolk gets released into the funnel (infundibulum) where, if live sperm are present, it will be fertilised. Next, the yolk moves down into the magnum, where inner and outer shell membranes are added, as well as water and mineral salts. The yolk then moves into the isthmus, where albumen (egg white) is secreted and layered around the yolk. Next the partly formed egg moves into the uterus, or shell gland, where it will receive it's shell...

Now, it would appear that after the egg white was added, the membranes failed to seal smoothly, leaving an uneven surface onto which the shell was deposited, resulting in the irregularity you're seeing. As aart said in a previous posts sometimes these little hiccups happen when the hen is stress, sometimes it's because of immaturity. You can read more about eggs, problems, development etc here: Common egg quality problems - BackYard Chickens Community

 

[HenMcGhie]

Thank you for the info! I'll look over it.

 

[HenMcGhie]

I just read over that article and found it fascinating. I've encountered a few of those egg problems too. I the ones I have encountered are caused by stress, or at least that's what they had in common. I'm always telling my kids to stop chasing the chickens. I wonder if my kids are stressing them out.

 

[sumi]

My son used to love chasing my hens around and after awhile I started noticing that him scaring the hens coincided with the appearance of odd eggs. He once scared the living daylights out of one of my hens and she laid what I can only describe as a "water balloon" afterwards. I've posted a pic of it in this article:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/why-are-my-hens-not-laying

I used that incident to show and tell my son why it's a bad idea to scare the hens and he thankfully stopped doing it. I was really worried when I got that egg!

 

[HenMcGhie]

Wow, that was one crazy looking egg!