Egg Troubles

June 15th, 2009 .

Yesterday, when I opened the coop up to clean this is what I saw:

Soft Shelled Eggs

Soft Shelled Eggs

I had a few soft shelled eggs when the girls first started laying but I thought that was the end of it. Today when I managed to drag myself out of bed my girlfriend told me that there was an egg in the run. I managed to get it out of the run without letting the birds escape but it was already cracked. Then when I got home from work today there was only 1 egg in the nest box and that was cracked too! Today wasn’t a good day for eggs!

I have no idea why this egg was laid here...

I have no idea why this egg was laid here...

This egg was laid in the right place but has a thin shell and was cracked

This egg was laid in the right place but had a thin shell and was cracked

I am wondering if they have a calcium deficiency – I put some grit with oyster shell down in the run so hopefully that will do the trick. I’m not convinced though as they have had access to grit since I first got them.

Frustrating

May 8th, 2009 .

I have had an egg each day off of two of my girls – the brown one and the grey one. The sad thing is that all of the eggs laid by my grey one have been wasted. She either drops the eggs on the coop floor or lays soft shelled eggs. It’s starting to get a bit frustrating now…

Yesterdays egg cracked when it hit the floor

Yesterdays egg cracked when it hit the floor

Todays egg had a soft shell

Today's egg had a soft shell

Soft Shelled Eggs

May 6th, 2009 .

This morning when I opened the coop up and let the girls out there were 2 very strange looking eggs on the coop floor. One of them was like a normal egg but a bit squashed looking, and the other was small and very pointy. When I picked them up they had soft shells. I was going to take a picture of them to show you but unfortunately they split open in my hand so I had to just put them in the bin.

I’m not too concerned about this – the fact that there were 2 of them makes me think that this is not a calcium deficiency, but that they were soft because whoever laid them laid 2 eggs in one go. I think it was the grey one that laid them.