[geordiechick]

Hi.
I have 3 ex-battery hens.  1 was rescued in July 2011 (along with 2 others that died in December and January), the other 2 in December.

One of the December girls (Jo) was the scruffiest we have had but now has the best feathers, and is still producing new ones.  every week or so she passes an empty egg membrane (and has even been running around the garden with one hanging out of her vent in the past).  When we first got her she did lay good eggs although not very frequently.

The other December bird (Mary) has laid "supermarket" eggs throughout her time with us until very recently.  She now lays irratically and even she has laid some shell-less eggs.  Mary is now the scruffiest bird with lots of bare patches.  We've always presumed she's been using her energy to produce eggs rather than feathers.

Finally, Babs the oldest bird.  She has always been regular layer with large eggs.  The shells have become paper thin and today we had 3 shell-less eggs so we are presuming that they are all now suffering in the same way. 

The paper thin shells have led to another problem of egg eating.  We have ordered roll away nest box inserts to try to sort this issue as fake hard eggs haven't resolved it.

The shell-less eggs look like little white/cream leathery pouches and one today was even brown.

They are fed on ex-batt pellets, have grass and the garden to roam in (althogh their free ranging has been curtailed about 3 weeks ago as we decided we wanted some lawn for the summer that wasn't scratched up and coverd in poo!  They have oyster shell & baked and finely ground egg shell added to their food.  They do get some treats - greens (dandelions, etc + what they find in the garden) and corn.

I am worried on 2 fronts.  1 - we're missing out on the eggs.  And 2 -  there is something seriously wrong with them.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Jackie

[Happy Hens]

Hi 
We rescued 30 Ex batts a few years ago and had the same problem. I looked for a good high protein with lots of vitamins and goodness in. I use chicken conditioning feed from Farm Gate feeds and it did work. 

[grinling]

They could be coming to the end of their egg laying and/or they are not eating enough greens as they longer free range which they need to absorb the calcium.

[jhub]

I had a problem with one of my hens which unfortunately didn't end well but nevertheless I had lots of useful advice and have (hopefully) posted the link
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=78909.msg887911#msg887911
Regards,
Jane

[marygall]

Mary might be moulting as well - this puts them out of sorts and stops laying.

[geordiechick]

Thanks all for your comments and advice.

Happily there was a hard shelled egg today from Mary... Sadly we weren't there quick enough and caught 3 little hens with egg yolk (literally) on their faces.

Rock on the plastic roll-away inserts and we will look at more protein.

Keep the advice rolling in ...

[Carrie99]

HI there,

I find this quite interesting - just out of interest did you get yours from the Northumberland rehoming day? Anyway, I only ask as I have three ex-bats that I got in Oct 2011 and one of them has exactly the same problems. I had posted a link on here a few weeks back for advice and thought it had impoved but the soft eggs have returned again so perhaps that wasn't ever the case. They all seem bright enough - all but one now has lovely new feathers and they're all bright and seem cheery. I feed mine the ex bat smallholder pellets, they have access to oyster shell and get treats often in the evening.

Having read the other post (the one from the link above) I'm a little more concerned...I might look into what more I can do and which supliments I can give her.

Mine also enjoy munching the soft eggs although as yet the normal eggs that are produced remain untouched. I normally just find a yolkey mess if I don't get the soft ones in time!

Anyway, I'll be interested to hear how your hen is, perhaps we can compare and see if anything seems to help.

Carrie