Have you ever found an odd looking or misshapen egg when you’ve gone out to collect the eggs from the chook pen?
Below we outline the causes of some commonly experienced weird or misshapen egg situatio
ns, and what you can do to prevent them:
If things are going slightly awry in your chook’s life, or if their diet or water is not quite right, their eggs can sometimes provide a handy visible indication of this.
Below are some common strange egg situations and the dietary or water imbalances that can cause them:
Corrugated Eggs – Calcium and vitamin D3 deficiency or saline water.
Cracked Eggs – Calcium and vitamin D3 deficiency or saline water.
Shell-less Eggs – Calcium, phosphorous, vitamin D3 and/or manganese deficiencies.
Mottled Eggs (where the translucent egg shell layer is mottled rather than consistent around the entirety of the egg) – Manganese deficiency.
Dirty Eggs (faeces on eggs) – Poor gut health as a result of indigestible/imbalanced or poor quality feed, or excess protein in the feed. Electrolyte imbalances in water or saline water can also cause this. Dirty eggs can also be a sign of worms or other health issues.
Soft Shelled Eggs – Excess phosphorous in the diet or saline water.
Visit the Consolidated Nutrition – Common Egg Shell Quality Problems Table for more more information and images.
As you can see from the above, chooks need good quality water and suitable amounts of vitamins and minerals like calcium, vitamin D3, manganese and phosphorous in order to produce healthy egg shells. Essentially, your chook’s core food supply should be a good quality digestible feed that contains vitamins and minerals and a variety of different grains and/or seeds.
It should also contain a minimum of 15% protein and fats to keep your chooks strong, as well as carbohydrates for energy. We supply a range of quality balanced chook foods that contain essential vitamins and minerals for your chickens, including Poultry Mix, Layer Crumble and Layer Pellets from Thompson and Redwood in WA’s Swan Valley, and Layer Blend and Super Poultry Mix from Consolidated Nutrition in Cunderdin, with all of these made using quality Western Australian ingredients. T & R now even include postbiotics in all their poultry food. Postbiotics are the beneficial gut flora and microorganisms that probiotics create in the gut, so this gives your chooks the “good oil” direct to their gut.
Strange Eggs Caused by Too Much Calcium in the Chicken’s Diet
If you find lilac or pink coloured eggs, white or brown speckles on your eggs, white calcium deposits on your eggs, or calcium coated eggs (eggs coated with an additional layer of calcium), your chickens are likely to have an excess of calcium in their diet. These eggs are the ones that seem to need an inordinate amount of banging on the edge of the frying pan before they’ll crack for you. Luckily, this situation is rarer than the soft shelled egg situation caused by not enough calcium and an occasional pinkish or extra hard egg is nothing to worry about. However, if you’re collecting eggs frequently that look like this you may need to change your chook’s primary feed to a lower calcium option.
Like all living creatures, chooks are affected by stress and their environment. The process of forming the egg shell actually takes about 20 hours, so it’s no wonder that stress at any point during this process can affect the shell of the egg when it’s eventually laid.
Below are some other weird egg situations and their common causes to be aware of:
Misshapen eggs (including banded eggs and slab-sided eggs), soft shelled eggs – Stress.
Blood on Eggs – Not a concern if it’s only occasional as this is often a result of pullets coming into lay. If frequent however this can be associated with poor pen hygiene or health issues in your chooks.
Visit the Consolidated Nutrition – Common Egg Shell Quality Problems Table for more more information and images.
For any other chook feed or nutrition questions, simply drop in to our Moora store or give us a call on 1300 327 626.
Some of the Information used in the above article comes from Consolidated Nutrition’s resource Common Egg Shell Quality Problems, from the Australian Eggs’ article How Do Chickens Make Eggs? and from Backyard Chicken Coop’s article Diarrhoea in Backyard Chickens.
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