After I laid Almond to rest yesterday I sat with the other girls for a bit. I noticed one of my girls, Alkaline, was standing a bit odd.

Every so often it would appear that she was straining – a classic sign of being egg bound. So I took her inside & gave her a warm bath for 20 minutes. While giving her a bath I massaged her abdomen gently and tried to feel for any egg that might be lodged. I couldn’t feel anything so I was concerned that perhaps I misdiagnosed but I kept at it.

When I was done with the bath I popped her inside a mower box with a heat pad under a towel, as keeping an egg bound bird warm is vital. I made sure I put in a bowl of water in there in case she got too warm and put some liquid calcium in in case that would help her pass the egg.

In the morning I found this in the box:

Two soft shelled eggs. Success! I then put her outside with the other girls and she’s been fine all day.

Now to figure out why she’s laying soft shelled eggs. My girls get calcium grit, high quality feed and they free range so in theory they should be fine. For the next few days I intend on putting calcium in one of their water bowls to try and fix things up, we’ll see how that goes. Fingers crossed things with my girls are a bit quieter for at least the next few days!

In other chicken news, I did my first sticker run by putting some of these beauties up

on the boxes that contained caged eggs at the local supermarkets. If it makes even one person reconsider buying caged eggs then it’s been a success.

-Paula

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