My chicken laid a soft shell-less egg. Once I shared it with everyone, ( who wouldn’t) I decided I had better find out if there was something wrong with one of my chickens. This is the first shell-less egg I have found, but we have found eggs with very thin shells or even broken. The first thing was to find out which chicken(s) have the issue. Is it just one or are there more? I had 3 options:
I only have 5 chickens so I chose to just watch and see who has the laying issue. I found out only one of the chickens has the issue so I stopped worrying about the others and concentrated on the one with the problem. There are a few possibilities when it comes to chickens laying shell less or very thin eggs. This is not an exhaustive list, but a list of the more common issues.
Our chicken doesn’t seem to show any signs of illness, their coop and shelter are cleaned daily, with no signs of pests, and we provide chicken feed that they have access to at all times. There is plenty of room for them and I let them out daily. I am providing crushed oyster shells and watching for other signs. Either our chicken has reproductive problems or I am missing something. What do you think? Have you ever had any of these issues. What did you do?
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We have 5 chickens, 2 Barred Plymouth Rock, and 3 Rhode Island Reds. Both are dual purpose brown egg layers. Both breeds are easy to raise and winter hardy, with good egg production. Most importantly, I just love having them. I enjoy sharing the eggs with others and find them an enjoyable addition to our home. Originally, we had 6 baby chicks, but we soon found out one was a rooster, and our regulations don’t allow us to have a rooster. Beautiful as he was, the poor little lad had to go! Having found out since that the Barred Rocks are the hardest to sex, I probably wouldn’t order them again. Not because they aren’t great birds, but just so that I have less of a chance of having to deal with getting rid of a rooster. I really don’t like giving up animals! Having had chickens before we found that a small area for them creates issues for the birds. They vary from birds harming one another to health issues. We eventually gave our previous birds away, and decided we would wait until we could provide a larger area for them. Sometimes you have to decide what is best for the animals. We now have a much larger area with full netting, perches, trees, areas to dig and shelter for rain. Even a larger area doesn’t always guarantee no issues. Our current birds did have one situation with 2 of the birds, where one, Tillie, decided that it wasn’t letting the other, Polly, near the food and was downright nasty. However, we were able to put extra food on their laying house and with a bit of preferential treatment to Polly, the situation calmed down. In this case having a larger area gave Polly room to stay safe. It was during this time that Polly laid a miniature size egg. She is doing great now! We also have established a routine of letting them dig through our compost which is beneficial for us both. It happens to be protected with trees so they can enjoy the host of insects, fungi, and vegetative debris to happily and safely scratch through. We can’t let them roam freely as we have a lot of predatory birds in our area that are constantly sweeping through. The compost area is a happy compromise for the birds. Since we live in an Urban area, we discussed our desire for chickens with our neighbour that was going to be most affected by us having chickens. We found that they were happy to have them close by where their 2 young girls could enjoy them also. A few eggs from time to time can be helpful too! Having chickens can be very rewarding. They are fun for the family, provide healthy eggs, can make you friends in your neighborhood when you share the eggs, great fertilizers and compost helpers and overall garden pest control managers. There is a bit of a learning curb, and you do need to think about how they fit into your lives, but if you love animals, you will love having chickens. |
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