Chicken Memorials

[braden01]

..having just been out to close up Eglu, I've found a very misshapen soft egg out in their run. The chucks (it may be one or both) started laying only 24 hours ago and I've had 1 x tiny egg with very thin shell, 1 x egg broken on nesting bars and shell felt thin and 1 x totally misshapen soft shell. Insides of all the eggs looked perfectly normal. Both the chucks seem well, alert, feeding and drinking lots although one has been having runny and orange/foamy poos on and off since we got them 3 weeks ago. They both free-range for quite a bit of the day and love flies, worms, my plants etc

 

My daughters are obsessed with trying to feed them so are forever picking up leaves etc and offering them and will give them sweetcorn (which chickens go wild for) as soon as my back is turned. I'm going to put them on a strict 'no treats' diet for a few days and see what happens.

 

Do I need to do anything else at this stage? Do I need to send off for supplements as they are pretty expensive with postage etc and don't want to waste money - tempting as it is to pamper the chucks!

 

Any advice / experiences would be most welcome.

[Mrs Frugal]

Wait for a few days before worrying as the first eggs can sometimes be a bit on the odd side until they settle into routine. If it continues, you can try some supplements like Shellstim or just crushed oystershell and a bit of cod liver oil but I'll bet they settle down in a week .

[Guest]

As Kate says, things sometimes take a few weeks to settle down, and you can get a variety of soft shelled, no shelled, mis-shappen and double yolkers while the chickens inside mature, and get into the swing of things. If things continue soft, and you don't want to shell out (do you see what I did there??! At 7:30am as well!) on Shellstim (it is a bit expensive, but would last you forever!) then a good way to get calcium into your chickens to try and rectify the problem is to bake empty egg shells, and crush them and feed them to your girls with something tasty - I crush them into an oat and bio yoghurt porridge.

[braden01]

the swing of things. If things continue soft, and you don't want to shell out (do you see what I did there??! .

 

Good effort on early morning puns..,.,and thanks for the advice!

[Poultry in Motion]

I am no expert - still relatively new - but check out my post about our early days: http://club.omlet.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10648

 

We had two broken, soft eggs on the first day. Then nothing for a day or two, followed by a few more days of softies (and even one with no shell). Soon settles down though, without any need for additional supplements (we give them layers pellets and the odd bit of corn). They found their way to the nesting box by themselves and have been delivering one or two proper, hard-shelled eggs a day.

[Rhapsody]

If its any consolation I got 2 softies today and you'll see from my sig my hens have ben laying for a few weeks- i had a terrible night's sleep and then overslept, by the time I got up and let them out we had 2 softs through the bars. I guess it was stress and them all being in there jostling around wanting to lay.

In a rambling befuddled way I'm trying to say it could be many factors apart from the food your kids are providing. I also do the 'eggshell porridge' trick with leftover bread crumbled in water.