Help with soft shell eggs

[opie4]

Good job! I knew you could!

Things have been going well in the coop. After the late afternoon egg following the first calcium pill, she had a day off as to be expected but no soft egg under the roosting bars and has laid 2 days in a row. Shells are still a little thin and rough but good enough to hold and perhaps better than they used to be.

The question now is how long do you keep supplementing and is there a chance calcium can correct the system so you don't need to keep giving it?

 

[Daisy June]

After noticing that my older hens were laying thin-shelled eggs, and one put out a shell-less egg, I did some reading about fermenting their feed. This has helped tremendously. My girls get both fermented and dry feed every morning, and the problems with the shells have stopped. I also give them crushed eggshells over their food on occasion. If you want to know more about fermenting, go to Homestead and Chill. This site gives an excellent explanation of why and how to prepare feed this way.

 

[rosemarythyme]

The question now is how long do you keep supplementing and is there a chance calcium can correct the system so you don't need to keep giving it?

Calcium doesn't remain usable in their system so she may need supplementing throughout her laying days, but if supplementing works for her, you can try easing back on dosage over time to find a sweet spot.

For maybe 10-14 days I'd give her a tablet daily and note the quality of the eggshell. If it's consistently improved, you can then try 1 tablet every other day for 10-14 days. If results are still good, then try 1 every third day, and so on.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

@rosemarythyme is far more experienced and knowledgeable than I, so by all means, trust her advice. However, when I had this problem - I was getting as many as two to four soft or no-shell eggs a day from newly laying pullets - I supplemented for about five days and that was it. I've not had faulty eggs since. However, I'm not convinced in my case that calcium deficiency was the cause of the problem. Turned out I had a couple of black rat snakes living under the coop. When that was resolved, no more jelly eggs, so I believe the egg problem was caused by stress.