Found an egg without a shell, have you had that?

Hi, Zana --

Finding an egg covered only by the membrane inside the shell (but not the shell itself) happens from time to time.  I grew up on a poultry farm, and found such eggs occasionally.

As I recall, the best way to deal with this situation is to be sure that the hens have enough calcium in their diet.  A common way to assure sufficient calcium is to feed the chickens oyster shell.  This supplements the calcium found in most commerical chicken feeds.  Commercial poultrymen feed it "free choice"; that is, they make it available in a feeder other than the one in which the basic chicken feed is offered.  I have chosen to add about 1/2 cup a day to the commercial chicken feed for my 40 hens; this seems to work well.  Oyster shell is usually available at most farm and ranch supply stores.

I hope this helps.  Best of luck...

Rick

One day my daughter frount a big egg, weighed in at 109 g , the next day she found  a small one that was only 35 ( both wayyyy off normal size for our chooks ) the big one was a double yoke, the small one had none. They too a photo of the frying pan.

As to the no shell bit, we get them on occasion and yes calcium. Oyster shell is expensive, we just use limestone. At first it might sound like an odd idea, but limestone is just OLD sea shells. And if you buy a bag of commercial layer pellets and read the ingreadients, it is probably listed there ( it was on a bag we brought once when we were short of feed )

Cheers Hamish