Misshapen chicken eggs full#

If you have more than one of these deformed chicken eggs, or find them frequently, be sure you your chicken feed offers a balanced diet and add calcium. I have only had this happen four or five times in all my years of owning chickens. These types of deformed chicken eggs usually happen in a chicken that is just beginning to lay. If you reach into the nest for your eggs without looking, it’s a pretty freaky feeling to grab hold of one of these. As you can see in the photo, it’s perfectly formed down to the protective membrane, but the shell simply didn’t form around the egg. It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while, I get a chicken laying soft eggs. The most bizarre of the deformed chicken eggs that I’ve ever found in my flock is the shell-less egg. Deformed Chicken Eggs and Egg Abnormalities It seems just the opposite from her other body parts. When she stops laying she will turn pale pink. This is kind of interesting to me since the bright color of her cone and wattles is a surefire sign that she is laying or about to. When she quits laying, you will see the color come back to these. After about six months of laying eggs, her feet, toes, claws and shanks will also fade. After she has been laying for a few months, the yellow in these and her beak will fade slightly. Before a hen begins to lay, you will see a yellow color around her vent, eyes and earlobes. Judging which hen is laying and which isn’t is not an exact science, but there are some signs.

When I have a hen who is unproductive for more than four months out of the year, I cull her.

If your main goal is egg production, then you probably wouldn’t want to keep your hen past 3 to 4 years of age as this is the age range she will be most productive. The average lifespan of a hen is 14 years. Depending on the breed and the lifestyle of your hen, you can expect her to lay for up to 10 years.

Misshapen chicken eggs full#

Once she begins laying, it usually takes her 7 to 10 weeks to work up to full production. As a hen matures, the size of her eggs and the frequency of her laying will increase. Of course, age is the first thing that comes to mind since most chicken breeds begin laying between 5 to 6 months of age. Just in way of a reminder, a pullet (a hen under a year old) will lay smaller eggs than she will as she grows and matures into a hen. You would think they would be used to doing it and not put on such a show, but it’s a production of cackles and crows for every egg! This is a very basic and simple explanation of the egg production process and somewhere in this straightforward, yet complex process, things happen that cause deformed chicken eggs and egg abnormalities. My whole flock gets excited and cackles for each and every egg, every day. Now, she’s ready to lay! Boy will she let you know when she’s done it. Finally, the shell is put on and the egg moves to just inside her vent. Next, the egg white is added, then it receives two membranes that help to keep the nutrients in and to keep its shape. Have you ever wondered how do chickens lay eggs? When the yolk for the day is ready, it enters the oviduct where it can be fertilized. There’ll be a cluster of little tiny yellow specks that look like grains of sand with small pebble like ones around them, graduating in size, larger and larger. If you butcher your own birds and any of them are of egg laying age (5 to 7 months for most all breeds), you’ll see the eggs waiting inside her.