A Little Under the Weather

After work I let the chickens out of the coop to get some fresh air and to run around and stretch their wings a bit. All seemed well when I glanced over at Luna. She was not her typical self. There was no running around and she seemed to just stand still and appeared to be in a daze.
I checked the coop and noticed that she had not laid her egg for the day yet. At first I did not think too much of it because there will be days where the chickens will not lay. However, her body language looked as though she was trying to push out an egg and that caught my attention.
  I brought her upstairs and felt her abdomen to see if it was hard, it was. Luna was egg-bound. When a chicken is egg-bound they are typically trying to pass an egg that has gotten stuck in the Oviduct and are unable to lay it easily. My assumption was that Luna has been trying to push the egg out all day since she normally lays first thing in the morning.

The Egg with No Shell

  The first thing I did was create a warm bath in the kitchen sink to soak her in. The warmth of the bath would help to relax her muscles since they were probably swollen from trying to pass the egg. I put her in the water, which she was not a huge fan of at first, though she eventually relaxed. I left her in the water for about ten minutes. Then I brought her out and dried her on the towel. Next, I put some oil around her vent and just inside the vent to help lubricate the path where the egg comes out. After that I gently massaged her abdomen trying to help the muscles relax even more.
  About twenty minutes passed and she started to make a quiet whimper noise. I felt really bad that she was going through this, but I remained calm because I knew that we would figure it out. She eventually was able to push the egg out.

   Now when the egg came out it was shell-less. It was large in size and was soft which explains why it was so difficult for her to pass. This is the first time that I have seen a shell-less egg so I wanted to do some research on what causes that to happen and if there was any way I could prevent her for becoming egg-bound again.
 I found that this is common when chickens first start to lay. Their bodies are still adjusting to producing eggs so sometimes they will have one that has no shell. Some preventive measures you could take is to increase their calcium intake. I purchased some crushed oyster shells from the local tractor supply store. It is best to put these into a separate dish inside the coop because the chickens will know when they need it. You do not want to over-dose them on calcium so it is best for them to choose when they want to eat it instead of mixing a bunch of it in with their feed.
Their layer feed does contain calcium, however, when they start laying eggs sometimes chickens need an extra boost. Laying hens use three times the amount of calcium then non-laying hens use.
  After a few days, Luna was back to laying her normal eggs and running around like her old self. 


"Um excuse me, a little privacy please!" - Luna