weak shells, laying at night

Sassafras

Songster
9 Years
Jan 16, 2011
543
3
121
N.H.
I have free choice oyster shell in the coop but I am still having some shell weakness issues with 1 or 2 out of the 10. Some mornings there is a broken egg on the roost board or below it. They get their light turned on by 6:30 am and it is on til 6:30 at night. They get a small amount of scratch most days but mostly all they eat is their layer food.
I would like to add calcium to their feed. How much per pound would be right? What can I do about the night laying?
 
How old are they? As long as you have crushed oyster shell available to them free choice, there is no reason to put any more calcium in their food. Sometimes when they are young they have a few of these eggs, it's very common. They lay them at night because they do not feel like and egg and they just drop them where they happen to be. Don't worry too much, it will work itself out.
 
We've got one girl doing this also.
Every other night I see an egg that was in its last part of the laying process with various ammounts of shell on it. It ranges from membrane, softy, to barly hard however not a one of them survives the fall to the poop board intact.
The good news is that we dont have any egg eaters, and the egg poo mix will probably discourage any of it in the future.

I worried for a long time that I was feeding improperly or the chickens didnt know what to do with the oyster shell. Turns out they know full well and the diet is pretty darn healthy because the other girls are laying great and if they put out a small one its hard to break the shell is so hard.

Pullets just have to work out the internal mechanics on their own and just like roosters and crowing making eggs has a lot of variety even within the breed. Then again all of that variety is part of what makes chickens so fun.

Hope it works out fast, but I'm *going on week 3 of this so you never know~
 
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