Something very weird is going on with Marmite’s eggs

A couple of days before Marmite started laying again, after her broody spell, I found a soft shelled egg in the chicken shed one morning.

At the time I put it down to Spangle even though she had never laid a soft shelled egg before. The reason I thought it must be Spangle’s egg was that Smoke and Salmon laid later that day and I thought that Marmite wasn’t yet laying.

After this Marmite looked poorly before laying an egg a few days later. The egg was fine and Marmite seemed to be dropping feathers in a partial moult so I put it down to that.

Marmite then laid three, normal shelled, eggs without a problem before looking really poorly again. This time Marmite looked poorly for a day and a half before she settled in a nest box. She bounced back after laying but I got a shock when I saw what she had laid.

It was at this point that I realised the soft shelled egg in the chicken shed a few days before Marmite’s good egg must have been Marmite’s first egg after her broody spell. I have never seen anything like this before though.

If you look at the first photo it seems to have calcium blobs on the outside but it’s as if the calcium hasn’t formed in the correct way. It is also shaped as if it is half an egg. Even when the girls’ first eggs were really tiny they were round and had yolk in but this one had just white.

Five days later both Marmite and Smoke were in the nest box together. This was just as Smoke was going broody as she always lays one last egg at the start of being broody. This was the first time Marmite was in the nest box since the weird egg.

When I checked the nest box while Smoke was still in it there were two soft shelled eggs.

The egg on the right must be Smoke’s egg as it is the white colour of her eggs and it has a yolk. The egg on the left must be Marmite’s egg as it is darker in colour, it as a few blood spots on it and it has no yolk.

This was the last egg Smoke laid before being committed to being broody again. Smoke has never laid a soft shelled egg before but this time round she had laid six eggs in a row then missed a day then laid three in a row the last one being this one. I wonder if she has been laying too many eggs in quick succession. Six days in a row is a lot even for Smoke.

Marmite must have an egg laying problem and yet has always laid okay in the past. The next day Marmite went on to lay a normal egg but it did have some little blood streaks on the shell. We have now eaten it for breakfast and it was a normal egg with yolk.

I hope this is just a glitch with Marmite. It is all very odd. Their diet has remained the same and Salmon, who in the past has been prone to laying the odd soft shelled egg, has been laying good shelled eggs and laying more frequently.

We have never had two soft shelled eggs together before. I hope that things return to normal now. At least Smoke will now take a break from egg laying so hopefully that will help her get back to normal.