Riippers Posted May 9, 2020 Share Posted May 9, 2020 Hi first time poster! Set up.. we have a Cube with auto door and a 3m square Omlet run.. until our garden is properly fenced we are aren't presently free ranging them. We have four Rhode Island Red Hybrids. We bought them 6 weeks ago from a local farmer who sold them as POL 20 weeks. He had ALOT of hens and whether they where exactly 20 weeks we don't know. The Hens are very confident, healthy looking and have good appetite, we feed them Range Laying pellets and handful of mixed corn in the evening and the odd treat of UK sourced meal worms. The Hens are fantastic layers the eggs have consistently become larger and are very tasty! We get two everyday and most days three. The issue is from after the first week of ownership one of them has laid a soft egg pretty much every three/four days the egg is small and weird and often has what I can only describe as an umbilical cord? bar one they have all had no yokes either. I have researched this as much as I can over the last month or so, and asked other long standing chicken owners and pretty much everyone has said the hen is either young or getting herself ready to lay.. or not enough calcium. We added mixed grit to the run that they can eat whenever they want and the shells improved all round and the following week we had a soft egg that had it first yoke and we felt like it was progress, alas that was the only one to ever have a yoke and that was around three weeks ago now. The other interesting point that we have noticed is the soft egg is without exception always found on or under the perch's on the omlet cube. The normal eggs are always collected from the nesting box which we leave open 24/7 and they don't as far as we can tell sleep in there. We have grown attached to the hens despite being quite noisy at times they are a pleasure, so I don't like the thought that something is wrong with one of them that could potentially be easy to fix, although with the consistency that we get the soft egg I wonder as an experienced hen owner we know said .. she might just be a bad layer. We have narrowed it done to two of them, we have had three good eggs and one soft a couple of times so know its only one being effected but not sure what to do when the physically look fine! Any help or advice greatly appreciated Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cat tails Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 Some hens just need to get their egg laying insides up and running. But it could also be worms. Have you wormed them yet? Or did the breeder do this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dogmother Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 39 minutes ago, Cat tails said: Some hens just need to get their egg laying insides up and running. But it could also be worms. Have you wormed them yet? Or did the breeder do this? I'd also look at their diet - what are you feeding them on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
