Transillumineggie

We had already had a couple of eggs from the girls this morning so I wasn't expecting anything when I went to put them to bed tonight.  Spying a tan coloured blob in the half dark I put my hand in to retrieve it.  I quickly retracted it when what I touched felt more like a fruit jube lolly than an egg.  Taking a closer inspection to confirm that the cold slightly moist and squishy feeling thing wasn't a different sort of product from the chicken vent, I saw that it was a soft shelled egg.

The yolk in the centre can just be made out with transillumination

If you haven't come across one before there are several reasons chickens can throw a soft shelled egg:

• Lack of calcium or another dietary deficiency
• Advancing age of the chicken (particularly as mine are ex-battery hens bred for a short period of high production)
• Heading towards off-season or moult
• Fast transit through the oviduct (can occur if the first egg was overcooked, then the next egg was laid the same day)
• Unseasonal hot temperatures

Having said all that a one off isn't necessarily such a bad thing.  Besides, they look pretty all lit up.

Shell shocked

Since losing two of our newest chooks to what we presume was a fox, we've been religiously shutting them in the cage each night.  Sadly one of the chooks that was taken was Hopscotch (my favourite our of the new girls).  I miss her cuddles in the morning and have fond memories of her meeting me at the front door, then dorkily running after me back to the pen for breakfast when she was managing to escape from the pen.  She even went clucky at one point on the neighbour's side of the fence nestled in next to a gumtree.  I spent a week or so wondering why the girls had suddenly stopped laying.

Gonzo has recently started laying again after a very long period without a single egg.  Perhaps she was in mourning over winter after losing her friend Wheelie.  Her pure white shells stand out among the stock standard beige of all the others.

Today two of the girls had laid but one of the eggs was not quite right; it's all wrinkled with diverts around the side.  Either it was hard to get out or the shell is very thin.  We often get eggs with wrinkles in them but this one looks almost like a dinosaur or lizard egg!