Thin Skinned

Last week as I was gathering the eggs something happened that occurs a couple of times every month that I don't think I've ever shown you.  Look below at the egg on the top of the blue bucket.

Brown egg

I'll zoom in a little.  It looks like a perfectly normal egg, right?

Except it is not.  It is a soft egg.  An egg with only a membrane and not a hard shell.  It has a 'rubbery' feeling.  You can see that I am pushing my finger deep into the egg.  Strange, huh?  The first time we ran across this, it kind of blew our minds.  We were afraid something was wrong and if I remember correctly, we were afraid to eat it.

Here is a better look.  You can see that I'm bending the egg around my thumb a bit.  I don't want to push too hard as I don't want it to break.


The incredible edible bendable egg

What causes this strange phenomenon?  It could be several reasons:

1. Dietary needs of the hen: It could be a lack of calcium in the hen's diet.  This is probably not the reason as I give them crushed up oyster shells to eat as a calcium supplement.
2. Stress: This could possibly be the issue.  Chickens are always getting stressed out about something.  We've seen a reduction in the number of eggs we're picking up.  Maybe they are stressed out.
3. Cycle: If I was a betting man, this would be what I'd put my money on.  They say that hens going into a laying cycle or coming out of one will lay odd, soft eggs.

Oyster shells given to hens for calcium

Regardless the cause, we'll not let it go to waste.  Even though the outside is weird, the inside is a normal, delicious egg.  You don't have to crack this type egg - you simply 'tear' it.

This is won't crack

And here is the final product.  An egg ready to cook and the 'shell' if you can call it that.  It has a similar texture to a turtle's eggs, if you've ever handled any of those.

Just another interesting item we run across from time to time.  Oddly enough, none of our hens have ever laid an egg with a double-yolk.  I'm still waiting on that to happen.  That and a GOLDEN egg, but I guess you have to have a goose to lay those.