Our sapphire gem hens have started laying, but on Sunday I found something I’ve never seen before. Usually, pullet eggs are small, and sometimes they lack yolks. But I’ve never before seen one whose shell wouldn’t harden at all. For those unfamiliar with poultry, eggs are very soft (something like gelatin) when laid, but within about a minute after contact with air the shells harden. But this little one did not do so; I gently scooped it up and put it in a ramekin in the kitchen, but it still hadn’t hardened after hours; I think it must lack the enzyme or whatever causes the shell to harden. I’ve got two other eggs in this picture for size comparison; the one at top is what would be called a “large” egg in the US, in other words a pretty typical egg one would buy at the grocery. The one at left is a typical pullet egg from one of the other young hens, and the one at lower right is the softie; if you zoom in you will be able to see that the texture of the soft shell is visibly different from the more typical pullet egg beside it. This is one of the things I like about keeping animals; one gets to see fascinating little things about the world that are invisible to the average city-dweller. It’s kind of like Mr. Wizard Goes to the Country (for you youngsters, Mr. Wizard was like Bill Nye the Science Guy from the ’50s-’80s). And that’s fine with me, because as I’ve mentioned before, what I wanted to do for a living at the time I entered university was science popularization. And though that’s not where life led me, I still love talking about that sort of thing as an amateur.
Diary #576
July 13, 2021 by Maggie McNeill
5 Responses
Leave a Reply
Visit my bookstore
This Month
Old Posts
Call me
Become a Blog Patron
If you want to donate but don't want a recurring charge, you can send any amount you like via PayPal to my email address (see below). Be sure to include a note so I can thank you!Contact Maggie
Maggie on Twitter
My TweetsBoring but necessary legal stuff
When I was on the farm, I occasionally saw eggs that would not harden.
I saw an egg like that when I was very young, at my grandparents’ farm. I remember it as being normal size, but I was very young and the memory isn’t that clear. But other family members have confirmed seeing those eggs occasionally.
I once read (might’ve been Wikipedia) that the small eggs without yolks are the very first egg laid by each chicken, but I’m not certain. I also read that yolkless eggs were believed to have been lain by roosters in Medieval Europe.
Raised in country and small towns like “no, the other one”, where there was everything from backyard flocks to commercial flocks and hatcheries.
Many possible reasons for rubber eggs, including pullet age, not enough calcium, stress and illness.
Since these just started laying, age is a good guess. Sometimes the first eggs are rubber. If the same pullet or the whole flock keeps laying rubber eggs, then check some of the other possible reasons.
If you’ve been feeding them grower feed since hatching, switch to layer feed with more calcium. Or add calcium by crunching eggshells into their feed.
Maybe the recent heat waves in the northwest caused some heat stress.
If you continue to find rubber eggs, the intarwebs and youtube are full of good advice about preventing them.
My grandparents bought crushed oyster shells for their chickens. They swallow the pieces for their gizzards and it provides extra calcium. I assume you can find them in any feed store.
Of course, Maggie probably knows about oyster shells already.