Soft egg shell stuck in vent

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Glad the patient is doing well. The smashed egg in the nest may or may not be hers, but don't assume it is. Spend a little time among the flock to get a feel for how all are behaving. These egg quality issues can be a harbinger of the new laying season, laying systems getting geared back up, and calcium levels may not be up to normal in all hens.

Just yesterday in my flock, one of my little Buttercups was isolating behind the stand that the water tank sits on. It caught my eye because normally, she's like a battery operated toy, always darting here and there. So I stood and watched her. She was very subtly hunched and then she puffed up her feathers just very slightly. But it was enough to tell me that she was possibly having an egg laying problem.

I popped a calcium tablet into her beak and turned her loose. It was about an hour before roosting time. Later, at final coop check, I saw she was on her perch with a soft shell egg on the floor under her being dismantled by the two other hens who live in that coop. She is one of my youngest, so I attribute it to being early in the season and her system isn't as supplied with calcium as it should be. So she'll get a table a day for the next several days.
 
azygous said:
These egg quality issues can be a harbinger of the new laying season, laying systems getting geared back up, and calcium levels may not be up to normal in all hens.
Click to expand...
A couple of the almost 4 year olds are starting back up, so it could easily have been one of them.

I've been out to the coop more often than before, about every 60-90 minutes. So far, I have not seen Pip on either nest.

She was never a "lounger," unlike one of the 4 yo hens. I swear that one has a book or a tablet in there when she goes to lay. :)
 
I tried the peanut butter on a calcium pill today for Pip. I cut the pill into 4 pieces (well, 3 pieces, 3 little bits, and some dust). I put a bit of PB on 2 of the pieces and offered 1 to Pip. She took it, ran off, dropped it, picked it up, ran off, dropped it, stared at it, and then picked it up and ate it. She ate the second one without hesitation.

I don't know if she has laid an egg since this all began. I haven't see her in a nest. I wanted to try the PB trick in case I have to dose her with calcium again. Pulling on her wattles DID make her open her beak, but she was jerking her head around and it was hard to pop the pill in. She kind of avoided me for a bit after that.

It's good to know I can get her to take calcium if necessary. Thanks, @azygous, for the tip!
 
Well.... Maybe she's not totally fine. I'll be giving her calcium again for the next few days. I saw her munching egg shell this afternoon. Late today, she laid this 93 (!) gram softshell egg. The green on the membrane/shell tells me it's Pip's egg. I found it in the nest box at lock up, so she laid it sometime between 5:15 and 6:15. It was very slightly warm.
IMG_E5743.JPG

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My poor little Pippy. Thank goodness it did not break inside her!

I'll be cutting calcium citrate pills into quarters and putting a bit of peanut butter on them. She liked those.
 
I'm just following up on this, and want to document the rest of this story. I'm looking into alternate treatments, should I run out of amoxicillin and have no way to get more.

After the 10 days of amoxicillin, I followed up with 7 days of lotus leaf extract (LLE). I read this study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar...ited apoptosis,immune function in laying hens.
Yeah, it's a really dry read. Take away: 250 mg/kg (of bird's weight) of LLE seemed to work as well as 250 mg amox. I gave Pip one 450 mg capsule of LLE a day. I estimate her weight to be about 5 pounds.

My 7 days with LLE didn't seem to make any difference in Pip. I wasn't expecting anything, really. I wanted to make sure that I didn't see anything negative (diarrhea? seizures? changes in behavior?) and that she would take the pills, which she did.

She still looks at my hand to see if I have a pill. :)

I also looked to see if I could find a way to get more calcium in her, as a regular part of her diet. I decided to try a bag of layer feed, but didn't want to feed 16% protein. I found this:
IMG_E5839.JPG

IMG_E5840.JPG

This feed is significanly more expensive: $27/40# versus the Kalmbach Flock Maker $21/50#.

I also ordered flaked oyster shell, and have that in the "calcium bowl." The chickens really like crushed egg shell the best, but I'm nearly out of that, since it takes 2-3 eggs' worth to make another egg.

This feed also has much less methionine; 0.3% versus the 0.55% of the Kalmbach. Since Pip is neally 11 months old and this is NOT going to remain their usual feed, I'm not concerned.

I'll update with any news.
 
Every morning at open, I check for an overnight dropped egg in the area where Pip roosts. I found this today:
IMG_5872.JPG

It was frozen, so Pip laid this sometime late last night. (Low of 18 this morning.) The shell of the egg seemed to be good, but a little thin. I don't know if it cracked when she laid it, or when it froze. I couldn't tell which came out first, the intact egg, or the no-shell egg. They were in the bedding, and I didn't see any lash material.

@azygous, do you think I should do a series of lotus leaf extract pills, just in case? I don't see a downside to that, do you?
 

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