[babaloo151070]

Hello Chicken Lovers please can someone help?
Well my three hens have settled in well and have been laying an egg each a day forthe past four, five weeks untill last week!  One of my hen's is laying eggs with soft shells almost like egg shaped balloons?  On a few occations she has laid two of these a day and on saturday she also laid a normal egg.  Ive found this quite upsetting (silly I know)  but tonight went I closed up there house for the night I did my usual and opened up their hatch to give them their good night pat and have our lil chat and I noticed she had laid another soft shell.  As I went to take it she trd on it and it burst and before I could do anything all three jumped on it like vultures!!!!

I was horrified and have just sat down needless to say shocked and yes again a lil upset by it all.  Please can anyone offer me some adive on this.

Hope your all well

Regards

A deflated Fred 

[spencekelliem]

Hi,

Just to let you know you are not on your own! My girls have eaten an egg every day for the last week.

Ive been advised that they do it because they are calcium deficient, and that they need more oyster shell/ grit.

Ive also been advised to dry out their shells of eggs you have used, crush them up and feed them back to them.

Do you think yours could be calcium deficient?

[hillfooter]

Hi,

Just to let you know you are not on your own! My girls have eaten an egg every day for the last week.

Ive been advised that they do it because they are calcium deficient, and that they need more oyster shell/ grit.

Ive also been advised to dry out their shells of eggs you have used, crush them up and feed them back to them.

Do you think yours could be calcium deficient?

Soft shells can be a sign of a calcium deficiency or a vit deficiency.  If you don't make oyster shell available either on it's own or as a mixed grit do so on an adlib basis.  Vit D is present in cod liver oil or tuna in brine or use a multivit drink.  A more concentrated form of calcium is limestone flour from horse feed merchants.  Only feed this for no more than 7 or 8 days as high calcium can cause other problems too.  If these measures don't show an improvement then other treatments maybe needed. 

(Note crushing eggshells which have been first heat sterilised, is a tedious and time inefficient process to get sufficient to use, as well as not being as good a source of calcium as oyster shell or limestone flour.  A kilo of oyster shell won't cost more than £1.50.  Only sad people crush egg shells.   Are you listening Joy??).

This isn't an uncommon problem and provided it isn't caused by a disease it will usually clear up on its own.

Ex batt layers are very susceptable to this and you can google "cage fatigue" for more info on possible causes.  With ex batts I'm affraid it can be a chronic condition which  you might not be every completely free from. 

Infectious Bronchitis commmonly causes poor egg shells and affects older birds and you can google that too for more info.

If it doesn't clear up on its own or with the extra calcium then I'd try an electrolyte for 7 days followed by multivits for 7 days.

If you need more help then you need to provide more info on what they are (ie exbats, hybrids, pur breeds etc),  their history (how long you've had them and if just acquired what's their history), how old are they and their nutrition including treats and medications or supplements and drink.

Eating soft eggs is usually what happens and should be discouraged so they don't acquire this as a habit.

Best wishes
HF

[babaloo151070]

Hi people thank you for your posts my hens are light Sussex and are about 23 weeks old. They have a good layers pellet from pets at home the vegetetian kind, grit with crushed poster shell and we change their water twice a day more if it's a hot day as the water gets warm. As a treat they also have sun flour hearts now and again but not many just from my hand and and the occational scraps from veg.

[Casey76]

Eating soft shelled eggs is very hard to avoid.  Eggs are an excellent source of protein and the hens will take advantage of this.

Also eating a soft shell egg is a hens way of cleaning up to prevent predators coming in the nest too, so it is just natural instinct.

[babaloo151070]

But is the fact that they have eaten an egg mean that this is the end of them being
nice egg caring chics that they were.

[joyfull]

no they are just being normal chickens and protecting their own - like casey said they are removing anything that would encourage preditors and getting some protein to boot 

[Maccbean]

I've had this problem with my five hens for a year shockingly.  I got to the point where I was only getting one proper egg a day, along with one eating the eggs regularly, plus a bit of feather pecking thrown in.  I've tried absolutely everything which included oystershell and grit, ACV and liquid calcium in their water, but managed to get an extra bit of good advice. 

1. Firstly I changed their food to Smallholders mash which is a better quality than I had been feeding
2. To add a bit of limestone flour to their feed
3. To continue with the davinova C and ACV in their water.
4.  I was giving them probiotic yoghurt daily, but I was told to substitute this with dried seaweed
5.  Three have suffered with runny bottoms constantly, which I attributed to worms so I was worming them every 2-3 months, but I was told this strips their stomachs, and only to worm every six months.

It's early days as I've only been on the regime for three weeks, but the soft eggs are slowing down and proper eggs are turning up.  Yesterday I got three in one day, delighted !  I did buy some bumper bits to stop the feather pecking and the egg eating (plus a bit of bullying) but couldn't bring myself to put them in their nostrils.  Luckily, the davinova c seems to be helping with the feather pecking anyway.

Sorry, that was a bit long, but it can be a matter of trying different things to see if they work.  Good luck!

[Casey76]

Your runny bottoms were probably tied in with the probiotic yogurt.  Chickens are lactose intolerant, and therefore can't digest dairy produce.

[joyfull]

as an alternative to pro-biotic yoghurt's you can use avipro plus which can either be sprinkled on their feed or mixed with water, it is for birds and is a lactose free pro-biotic 

[hillfooter]

Hi people thank you for your posts my hens are light Sussex and are about 23 weeks old. They have a good layers pellet from pets at home the vegetetian kind, grit with crushed poster shell and we change their water twice a day more if it's a hot day as the water gets warm. As a treat they also have sun flour hearts now and again but not many just from my hand and and the occassional scraps from veg.

Hi Babaloo,

Your LS are very young yet many pure breed LS don't start to lay until they are over 24 weeks to 28 weeks.  I can't see that you are doing anything wrong nutrition wise so I think it would be completely wrong to change anything now.  I'd stick with your current regime and if they don't naturally improve then consider other options.  the worst thing you can do now is change to mash which can induce stress.  Mash is not suited to small scale free range systems and it's place is in commercial flocks where feed is strictly measured out at feed times not made available adlib.  When chx come into lay initially that is stressful enough without starting to stuff them with a change of feeds and a host of useless supplements.  Maccbeans experiences were bourne out of desperation after a long period of problems so I wouldn't say you are in that boat yet.  The first page of any chx book should have, like the Hitchhikers Guide to the Gallaxy, the words DON'T PANIC writ large.

Keep their nutrition nice and simple (though not sure about vegitarian pellets) with a basic layers pellet from a main stream non fancy supplier such as Spillers, Dobson & Horrall, BOCM Paul, Marriages or similar and avoid speciality feed merchants such as Allen & Page or any offering highly targeted benefits which are all formulated from theory and cost extra for no good effect.  Supply crushed oyster shell adlib and try limestone flour and a vitD or multivit if there's no improvement in 10 days or so.

Egg eating as Casey says is a natural reaction to laying non viable eggs and nothing to worry about.  A few teething problems can be expected so DON'T PANIC.

HF

[hillfooter]

Your runny bottoms were probably tied in with the probiotic yogurt.  Chickens are lactose intolerant, and therefore can't digest dairy produce.

Couldn't agree more.  Can't understand this probiotic yogurt fetish.  I know the theory and even theoretically it doesn't make any kind of sense.  Competitive exclusion is the benefit claimed after an antibiotic course but even that is dubious as probiotic yogurt only contains a handful (less than 10) of helpful bacteria where as there are normally 1000's residing in a chx gut so how encouraging the 10 species of helpful bacteria is going to exclude the 1000's of unhelpful ones is a mystery to me.  If it really works it is likely to be more harmful than helpful as it will also exclude the other helpful bacteria a healthy chx will need to repopulate it's gut with.

HF

[Maccbean]

It's the normal thing, as a novice, you take advice from those that are very experienced. You will see everywhere the advice to give probiotic yoghurt daily, so I did, simple! 

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting that Babaloo change feeds at all.  My routine with my hens has been the same for two years with the same feed, the first year with no problem at all, five eggs most days (even with two pure bred leghorns).  But you are right I was desperate, not because I wasn't getting eggs, more that soft shell eggs aren't right, especially on a long term basis.

With so much differing advice around, it is difficult to know what to do, but I have decided to go with advice from someone that specialises in selling hens and feed.  My hens seems happy with the changes I have made even in the short term, and getting two proper blue eggs for the first time in a year says a lot me thinks!

[joyfull]

maccbean, you will find that we all do things our own way - like me - I bake and crush egg shells for my chickens which is a very old fashioned method and also recomended by my vet but Hillfooter is obviously too busy going out and shopping for oyster shell to do this and seems to think it is a waste of time  . It sounds like your method of solving your problems has obviously worked for your chickens - different feeds suit different birds although lactose is bad for them especially every day.

[hillfooter]

Well I wasn't criticising what you had done Maccbean.  Obviously you had run through the normal series of cures so anything is worth trying however the situation with Babaloo's chx is entirely different and also for all I know her chx could be ex batts which often have soft egg issues so it's not obvious that the two cases are comparable. 

With young hens it's not an unusual situation to have a few soft eggs when they first start laying so I don't feel encouraging an intervention is warranted.  As it happens I have had some recent problems with some poor shell quality and soft eggs which I treat with a week of electrolyte drink followed by a week of multivits which improved things then as I suspected some infection too an antibiotic and egg production has doubled and egg shell quality is now excellent.  However I wouldn't propose this treatment in babaloos case either.

Well I must pop out to the shops now for some crushed oyster shell unless Joy's going to drop by with her crushed egg shells.
Best wishes
HF