Soft shell egg layed whilst roosting

[dinosaw]

This is my first post on this forum so hello to everyone 99

I was wondering what you all make of this:

One of my goldlines layed a soft shelled egg whilst roosting last night, it was there under her perch at 5.30am this morning. This is the third time she has done this in 6 weeks and each time she goes into the nest box at her usual time of 9-10am for around half an hour and tries to lay as if she doesnt realise that she already has. We got her aged 19 weeks and she layed on her first day with us and every day since, a high proportion (about 1 in 4) of her eggs have been double yolkers. She has access to oystershell so i'm not sure that its a calcium issue, I was wondering if she is ovulating too quickly and the shell is not having the chance to form properly? If anybody else has had this problem I would be grateful for your thoughts/advice. Thanks

 

[Marigold]

Hi Dinosaw, and welcome to the Forum.

You didn't say how old your hen is. If she's a young bird, less than a year old, especially if she's only been laying for a few weeks, it may well clear up as she settles down to laying again. But if she has been laying very heavily for several months, or more than a year, especially so many double-yolked eggs, it's quite possible her calcium resources are just depleted. This isn't just a matter of giving oystershell, it's more a question of how well she's able to absorb the calcium in her food, even if she's getting plenty, and this is quite a complex matter to understand or correct. If she's more than 2 years old, it's possible, sadly, that she's coming to the end of her laying career, having been bred to lay so often and successfully. Goldlines were originally bred for commercial egglaying and the farmer would cull them at around 2 years when their egglaying inevitably dropped off or the shells became thin. All hens have only a certain number of potential eggs in their ovaries, just like women do, and when they're used up so fast with highly productive hybrids, they're gone that much sooner. Purebreds, on the whole, tend to live longer partly because they lay less often, but at a steadier rate.

Not much you can do about it, as you can't tell her to stop laying for a bit whilst she rests and recovers. There are some preparations you can add to her food or drink to help improve calcium uptake, I tried Shell Max when I had two 2-3 year-old hybrids last year, doing the same as yours, it wasn't very successful, though, i'm sorry to say.

 

[dinosaw]

Hi Marigold

Thankyou for your reply, she is only 25 weeks old so hopefully as you say she will settle down with time.

 

[Chuck]

All you can do is wait & see what happens & it's quite common. The situation may right itself. Be sure to clear away any egg that you find so that the hens don't eat any which could lead to egg eating of the good eggs.

 

[chrismahon]

We get this when we've had a fox or a mink ( we're alongside the canal) or someone? around in the night. Then the hen goes in to lay as normal, unaware that she has already laid. Because we have several coops we can get several of these premature eggs, one or two in each coop. It only happens every 4 weeks or so. Presumably the intruder realises they can't get in so doesn't call again for a while.

 

[dinosaw]

Hello Chuck and Chris, luckily the eggs have shown no sign of being nibbled at and like you say I've cleared them away first thing. Interesting what you say Chris about intruders as the first two soft shells occured when introducing new birds to the flock (she went ape) and this latest one when I have started to switch over from mash to pellets (which they are not happy about at all) so maybe it is a stress response.