Will this end in egg eating

[Loving my girls]

Hi everyone,
Thanks for reading my thread.
I have a 5 year old hen, a maran cross.
For the first 4 years she laid 4 or 5 a week, a good and happy hen.
Last year her eggs, suddenly, changed from 75g to 110g with dreadfully thin shells.
I separated her and gave her antibiotics, monitored her food, water and grit intake also checked her poops and monitored her sleep to awake ratio.
All seemed normal except she was eating masses (and I mean masses) of grit.
She stopped laying over the winter but has started again. Her eggs seem to be soft shell and are laid at night while she is on the perch. So, they are eaten by the flock.
I am having trouble making the decision for the flock so I would like to know what do you would do ?
Oh and I cant get the stuff that stops her from laying, I live in france where chickens come in cling film and polystyrene.

 

[BoundlessLove]

Have you tried giving her a calcium supplement?

 

[Loving my girls]

Have you tried giving her a calcium supplement?

Have you tried giving her a calcium supplement?

yes, ive tried that. also they are all on multivitamins, have been wormed and treated for external parasites.

 

[Loving my girls]

I would like to add that she is showing no other signs of calcium deficency, her feathers are black and glossy, she walks and runs with ease and her wattles are beautifully red. My cousin, vet, suspects a problem with her uterus. Perhaps a benign growth causing the abnormality. Without tests and equipment she cannot be certain although she has followed all events.
i supose i am asking should i have her put to sleep to avoid the risk of egg eating and peritonitis ? This is so hard.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I had a chicken like this recently. I feed chick starter with crushed egg shells and/or oyster shell on the side. She didn’t lay well for the first few months and it was just as you described—soft shells off the roost. It did not make my flock egg-eaters. I suspected she was just not healthy reproductively but I didn’t cull her because she was always the rooster’s favorite (my boys are dumb apparently). Anyway, she died last week from an unrelated illness but I suspect she was battling something internally as well. I wouldn’t cull her out of fear of egg-eating. My last flock would periodically eat eggs when they didn’t get enough calcium because they were picky about oyster shell and preferred crushed egg shell. Ironically, giving them crushed egg shell always solved the problem. My current flock is free ranged and gets extra calcium from plants in their environment and I haven’t had an egg-eater yet. I suspect your cousin is correct that something else is going on and it will probably get worse. I would cull when her quality of life begins to decline but not because of egg-eating. You will probably get different opinions on this so you will have to do what you think is best and I wouldn’t fault you for culling her either way. I was on the verge of culling mine the day she died and gave myself a deadline that if she was still in the nesting box by the afternoon I would end it. She was still in the nesting box but she was already gone so the decision was made for me.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Sorry that was a novel

 

[Altairsky]

If she's enjoying life there is no reason to cull her.
The flock will eat abnormal and broken eggs, this is normal and it wont trigger egg eating.

 

[Loving my girls]

I had a chicken like this recently. I feed chick starter with crushed egg shells and/or oyster shell on the side. She didn’t lay well for the first few months and it was just as you described—soft shells off the roost. It did not make my flock egg-eaters. I suspected she was just not healthy reproductively but I didn’t cull her because she was always the rooster’s favorite (my boys are dumb apparently). Anyway, she died last week from an unrelated illness but I suspect she was battling something internally as well. I wouldn’t cull her out of fear of egg-eating. My last flock would periodically eat eggs when they didn’t get enough calcium because they were picky about oyster shell and preferred crushed egg shell. Ironically, giving them crushed egg shell always solved the problem. My current flock is free ranged and gets extra calcium from plants in their environment and I haven’t had an egg-eater yet. I suspect your cousin is correct that something else is going on and it will probably get worse. I would cull when her quality of life begins to decline but not because of egg-eating. You will probably get different opinions on this so you will have to do what you think is best and I wouldn’t fault you for culling her either way. I was on the verge of culling mine the day she died and gave myself a deadline that if she was still in the nesting box by the afternoon I would end it. She was still in the nesting box but she was already gone so the decision was made for me.

Hi thanks for your advice, can i ask how long she lasted after starting with the soft shells ? also how old she was ?

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Hi thanks for your advice, can i ask how long she lasted after starting with the soft shells ? also how old she was ?

I want to say she lasted about six months. She was hatched in early March I think and started laying Sep/October. She died last week so she wasn’t even a year yet. But she had been laying normally since late November maybe though not very often. She was a Black Copper Maran so she wasn’t a prolific layer but she was laying less often than I usually experience with that breed and less often than my other two Marans.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I don’t think she died from an egg issue except that her vent had some yellow urates on it when she died. My flock all had infectious coryza and she seemed to be hit the hardest. She struggled longer and harder than any of the others and I believe it was because she was already dealing with something internally. So who knows how long she would have lived had she not gotten sick.