Decoding the Secrets of Eggshell Variations
Ever wonder why all the variations in eggshell quality? From soft shells to bumpy shells, we have you covered.
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Carey: 0:00
All right, poultry pals. Today on this episode, we're going to do a little, some a little different. We are going to talk about eggshells and a lot of the science y type stuff behind those and what makes changes and things like that. But we get a lot of questions here lately about what's the poultry nerds got going on. Cause Jennifer, especially, I got to give her kudos because she has become a website dang near expert.
Jennifer: 0:31
Oh no.
Carey: 0:32
There's been, we use Squarespace for our website. It's poultrynerdspodcast. com. Want you to check it out, join our mailing list because we've got a lot of exciting things coming up and there's your opportunity to get on the mailing list and we'll send out Stuff to let you know. Now, we promise we're not going to spam you and we're not going to sell your email address to somebody in India where you'll get a million emails a day. We're not doing that. But Jennifer, since that, to me, that is your baby. Do you want to walk us through? What all's on PoultryNerdsPodcast. com?
Jennifer: 1:14
I think fluid would be a good term using for it. I see a need and I don't see an outlet. And I think, you know what, we can do that. Why not? So I created an old school classified section. Now this is going to date me like my age and stuff, but back when we got newspapers, you need to read the classifieds and find what you were looking for. There wasn't links you could touch. You actually had to read the post and see if you wanted to call the phone number or whatever. There's actually a lot of people out there that don't have fancy websites. They don't have. They don't have crazy websites either. They don't have Facebook farm pages. They may not even be on social media and they need to find a breed or a breeder or a blog or just whatever. They're looking for something, cages, something they're looking for. And I thought, you know what? We could do classified section. And so we built, I built one into the website and it's free for anybody to come on there and look at it. But we are asking you to pay a small fee just for my time and the cost of the website to, to add it on there. Just a little small fee and right now that little small fee is 50 percent off just to start loading it up. But we have a desire, we have it divided up into quail, chickens, turkeys, waterfowl, and other. And then we can divide it even more if we need to. I was thinking people might want guineas on there. Those loud suckers. People look for them in the spring.
Carey: 2:59
Oh, guineas? Guineas.
Jennifer: 3:02
People love, it's a love hate relationship with guineas.
Carey: 3:06
So I think that with that, that's not chickens. And that's, I don't know, guineas, guineas may need their own.
Jennifer: 3:15
Yeah, we'll put them on their own little page because they might be so loud on the other pages.
Carey: 3:20
Like they're loud everywhere.
Jennifer: 3:22
Yeah.
Carey: 3:22
The whole thought behind this is, On Facebook, there's tons of people out there scamming folks, and we're gonna on these classifies before we post anything, we're going to check these people out and make sure that they are actual people, that they really do sell products. Um, we're going to try to prevent as much of that as possible. Nothing's a hundred percent. But when Jennifer and I talked about this. I got the newspaper slash Craigslist vibe and yeah, like I started putting together on my farm website a lot of files and stuff. And we may want to look at doing that here because There's a lot of people that are like homesteaders or poultry keepers or whatever you want to call what category. They don't do social media. My life would might actually have a little less stress in it if I didn't do social media. So I get it. And this way, people can come here and check that out because we hit a milestone today and I'll go ahead and say November the 20th. Boom. That's when we're recording this. We hit a milestone 9, 500 listener or downloads for the podcast. So to me, that's pretty huge. We back in January, we were like, Hey, we're going to get together and talk about birds and if people listen, they listen, fast forward, 10, 11 months, and here we are 46 countries. People are downloading our podcasts over 9, 500 times. So yeah, we figured let's put together a webpage and make it more of a source for people to get to and. something.
Jennifer: 5:27
And if there's you find a need for that And let us know. And if we can make it happen we will do it. But we have some other big stuff coming down the pipeline. We have some big podcasts coming. We have some events coming. 2025 is shaping up to be a big year.
Carey: 5:48
Can we talk about?
Jennifer: 5:49
No. Can we talk about next week? Yeah.
Carey: 5:53
Okay.
Jennifer: 5:54
You guys, I
Carey: 5:55
will say this Thursday, next Thursday. We have, probably one of the best one, best episodes in my opinion out there.
Jennifer: 6:08
It's going to be a mess. It
Carey: 6:10
was very fun. It was very fun.
Jennifer: 6:12
And it's our Thanksgiving present to you guys.
Carey: 6:15
There you go. And there's a big announcement on there too. The ads, so people that do the classified ads, they won't be clickable. When you send us your information, it'll be what it is. And people will be responsible for going to your site or giving you a call or whatever. That's another layer of protection to help. The end user to know that they're dealing with a real person when they hit that button and hit that person.
Jennifer: 6:48
Yeah, we wanted to be fair for people who didn't have websites or didn't have social media. Plus make it a little bit easier for me. We're getting close to breeding season and my time will be really limited. So I do the website part of it and Kerry does the technical podcast side of it. And so we want to make sure that everything was fair across the board. So each ad will have contact information and then it'll just be up to you to contact the person, just like it used to be in the newspaper.
Carey: 7:17
Ma'am.
Jennifer: 7:18
Yep. But go to the website, poultry nurse.com or poultry nurse podcast.com, same thing. And on the classifieds is up in the navigation and there's an ad section in each section of quail chicken, turkeys, whatever. And it explains everything that you need to know. You actually can click on that one and it'll give you more details. But right now an ad is$2 and 50 cents to place one.
Carey: 7:46
And that stays up for a month.
Jennifer: 7:48
Yep. So breeding season is coming. So go ahead and get your ad on there and let's get our community rolling.
Carey: 7:58
So today we're going to talk about eggshells.
Jennifer: 8:02
Oh yeah, we see that question a lot on social media.
Carey: 8:05
People talk about their, my eggshell looks like it doesn't have a shell. It's just It's rubbery. What causes that?
Jennifer: 8:16
Or crinkly?
Carey: 8:17
Crinkly. Yup.
Jennifer: 8:18
Blood.
Carey: 8:19
That's got blood on it.
Jennifer: 8:21
Bumpy.
Carey: 8:22
Bumpy. You know all kinds of stuff
Jennifer: 8:26
misshapen yeah, not in the nest box underneath the roost bar So I have to just say this scary and I haven't told you this yet So I went down a huge rabbit hole and ended up on some government papers and stuff about eggshells science papers and Anyway, it took I don't know. It was like hours and i'm like, oh my eyes are crossing about these eggshells and I was in the, I guess the commercial side of it. And those people that are running commercial land houses, they've really dialed it in because they're maximizing their profit. And it, when I realized that it's the pages that I was on, I was like, that's not really what we're doing. But if they've really dialed it in, then they're going to have some really good information.
Carey: 9:17
I was going to say, some of these people are popping out a million plus eggs a year. So if they've got it down to a science, then you know the person that's selling a couple of dozen here and there off their farm could benefit from that.
Jennifer: 9:34
Yeah, now both you and I both raise standard bred because we both show and those birds are not known for their egg laying abilities.
Carey: 9:46
Yeah somebody said, you have really nice Rhode Island reds. I want to get one of your birds and put it over mine. And that, Rhode Island reds lay really well. I'm like, I have standard Rhode Island reds. You're looking for production Rhode Island reds. There's a huge difference.
Jennifer: 10:05
Yes, huge difference. And so that actually got me thinking that I would have to go out on a limb here and just say majority of the people who have chickens in their backyard have production breeds, whether they realize it or not, they've gone to the hatchery or they've gone to tractor supplier, wherever, and they've picked up birds and those are going to be production breeds, which are meant for laying eggs, Consistently, early, all of that good stuff. Now, there's a reason for those. I think they're great. Everybody needs eggs. I haven't had an egg in a month. I envy the people with the production breach right now. Yeah. We're eating quail eggs. It takes a lot of quail eggs to make an omelet. Yes, but anyway, so while I was reading one of the papers and it was talking about in the laying houses, they only get 54 weeks. Out of those production birch. Yep. Of laying. And I was shocked. You say 54. That sounds like a lot, but that's really just a year. And when you go to Trash Your Supply in February, and you buy a chick, and it starts laying four months later, so you're at what, June? 54 months is the next July. 54 weeks is the next July. Okay.
Carey: 11:38
Yeah, so I actually have a friend that has a house up in Arkansas and they use the high lines for that and they will bring those birds in. At Pointe a Laye, 56 weeks later, they sell those birds for little or nothing to people because that's their peak. They're doing an egg a day minimum for that 56 weeks. And then after that, when the birds in their eyes are spent, then they'll sell them off to people. Who will come get thousands of them at a time and then take them and sell them again for, eight, 10 a piece. And at that point you're going to get a bird that lays, five eggs a week, but they're losing money if it's only laying five eggs a week.
Jennifer: 12:35
So in that paper, it was trying to come up with the nutrition profile to try to prolong it out to a hundred weeks. And they were. successful at pushing the bird to a hundred weeks, but it wasn't becoming cost effective because they were having to alter the nutrition for the older birds. They were getting a lot more eggs that they couldn't grade and sell to the open public. So eggs have to go elsewhere. I think, just based on what I was reading, if you've got a production breed and you're getting, 2 or 3 years out of them, I think you're doing really well. Oh, yeah. You're not got that nutrition dialed in like they do your, you're not running them as hard.
Carey: 13:28
Yeah, they're pushing them birds hard, like an athlete.
Jennifer: 13:31
Yeah. They're, they haven't molted. I doubt very seriously. They let them molt because they're not going to want to feed them through a mold.
Carey: 13:40
No, even feeding them right. You're still looking at two to three weeks
Jennifer: 13:46
and
Carey: 13:47
two to three weeks times thousands of birds. That's a lot of loss.
Jennifer: 13:53
Some of them had 80, 000 birds in some of the articles I was reading. It's a lot. So before we get into the eggshell quality, I just, I thought I would bring that up to, to set your expectations. If you have the standard bred birds, like we have our expectations of egg laying is pretty much. March to July, because they're big birds and that's what they're bred for. If you have production birds, then, they may live for 10 years, but they may not lay eggs that whole time. I have some hatchery orpingtons out there that are 10 ish years old now. There's two of them. One of them still lays and goes broody about every five or six minutes or so till the dog comes and finds her eggs and takes them. Yeah. Yeah. So I just wanted to first of all, you need to set expectations. For what you have and what you expect out of those chickens as far as laying is concerned. Now that we've said that, we can actually get into the egg shell quality. So I think the biggest thing that we hear is the softshell egg. And everybody wants to throw oyster shell and calcium and all that good stuff at that bird. And that poor bird's probably swimming and milking.
Carey: 15:15
There's so much stuff and, I know we laugh about it from time to time and you've been banned a couple of times from the BYC. We'll call it the BYC group
Jennifer: 15:27
and banned for life.
Carey: 15:29
I've gotten a couple of seven days. And I've had to learn to keep my mouth shut because people want to feel good. They don't want to hear like any kind of science about stuff. And we want to tell you guys the truth.
Jennifer: 15:43
Yeah.
Carey: 15:44
So what, tell me this, why, according to science is a chicken's egg? It looks like it's in a plastic bag with no actual shell around it. What's the cause of that?
Jennifer: 16:01
It could be lack of calcium. It could be a new layer. It could be a stressed layer, a hot layer, an old layer, one that got scared, one that's got an underlying disease. There's a. ton of reasons that was given why you would get a soft shell egg. I, I have a theory. This is not backed up by anything that I read, but this is what I do with my quail. So you as the nutrition officiant can say, no, Jennifer, you're crazy. This is my theory. So people who are new to chickens, they go to the store, they pick up the little chicks. And they are told to feed a chick starter and at 16 weeks, they move it to layer. I think that is a very poor. Train of thought, I personally think that you should leave them on developer for a long time. Developer, I call it developer. The bag that it comes in is called developer. I think it's grower starter.
Carey: 17:10
You got like most companies have starter grower. Developer, layer, conditioner, and some throw out, offlock.
Jennifer: 17:25
Offlock. My birds hate offlock. The ducks like it.
Carey: 17:28
Yeah, that's because it's got a lot of niacin in it, and they love that.
Jennifer: 17:32
So I'm going to talk about quail here because this is going to be the most parallel to the same production breed here. Cause I, my quail would be like a production quail because I run them hard in cages for eggs, right? So when they start laying. Which would be the equivalent of a chicken laying at 16 weeks, a hatchery quality chicken laying at 16 weeks. Yeah I continue feeding them starter for 2 more weeks. I wait until that egg is full size. consistent shape and that bird is done growing. So that puts them at for quail, that would be like 10 to 12 weeks. So if you were doing a production chicken, that's probably going to be more like 24 weeks.
Carey: 18:22
I was going to say anywhere from 20 to 24. So like with that, what you're doing, you feed off the shelf bag feed to your birds.
Jennifer: 18:32
Yeah, I do.
Carey: 18:33
Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But the reason why that you do that, and it's very smart that you do, is because those birds, when they start laying, yeah, they need a little bit of extra calcium, but they really need the amino acids and all that stuff, where you typically have a higher percentage in. Your starter and your developer, the a lot of companies, though, the way they keep their feed price consistent or cheap is when they have to toss in some more calcium, they take other stuff out and the amino acids is what makes the feed expensive, not. the actual food. So by giving them starter for an extra couple of weeks or a developer for an extra couple of weeks, you're just making sure they have the amino acids that their bodies really need. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's some people, will religiously be like, Oh, 16 weeks on a chicken, eight weeks. It's time to go for layer. They will not lay until their own layer. That's not true. You do not want to swap over to a layer feed until you see eggs. Once they start and not just one. Like she waits two weeks. Boom. That's it. That, that's her rule. That's because you want to wait until they start laying consistently. And they're not going to do it the first few days. With a quail, it'll take two weeks. With a chicken, it may take four. So once they start laying consistency consistently, that's when they need that. That's when they need the extra calcium.
Jennifer: 20:25
And they also need to finish growing. They need to finish that pelvic bone width. The structure needs to be finished in order to handle the egg size passing through. Okay, so now we've got you set up with expectations on what you've chosen to raise in your backyard. Now, you're going to feed them developer longer, and it would be better to err on starter, grower, developer, whatever you want to call it, longer than shorter. You can't really go too long on it. On my birds the chickens, they'll stay on developer for 12, 14 months before I put them on layer.
Carey: 21:10
I'll say this. I have one pin out of now, I hope to 20.
Jennifer: 21:17
What was that? Say it again. I
Carey: 21:18
had to sneeze. One pin that gets layer feed and that's because the birds in there, their primary purpose is to feed my family of 10 with eggs and friends and family to get some others, whatever. Those birds get layer. None of my other birds get a layer. They stay on. A developer type grower ration. Now two things I have in every single one of my 20 pens is a grit, limestone, gray, white colored rock that's appropriate to the size of the bird that's in there. And I do have calcium carbonate, AKA egg shells. I have that in a feed cup. And every one of them. And normally when I do my chicken chores weekly, I top those off. I have a small scoop that I typically use for my chickens. And because I'm lazy. And sometimes I think turkeys make a meal off of rocks. I use a large feed scoop to refill theirs up because, yeah, I don't know, turkeys eat a lot. They eat a lot, but they also eat a lot of grit. But that's what I do because that way, I know they're getting the nutrition and all of that stuff and with all the birds that my primary function for that bird is to grow it correctly according to standard. I'm not concerned if it's laying me eggs every day. I let it pick the calcium when it needs it because I'm more concerned about it having the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
Jennifer: 23:24
Okay, so now that we have laid out like the foundation here, let me ask you something. How often do you get a softshell egg?
Carey: 23:34
It's been a while.
Jennifer: 23:35
Me too.
Carey: 23:36
Now I'll say this, there's times When I go out of town and I come back, and if I've been gone longer than a couple of days, depending on how long or what time of year it is and how hot it is, if nobody has collected eggs for me, then I'm not taking those eggs in the house. I will chunk them off in the woods and let other animals eat them. And I can literally take my eggs and throw them. And they will skip across the field two to three times before they bust.
Jennifer: 24:13
Yeah, me too. So I do get, I do have some older layers that lay with bumps, some calcium deposits.
Carey: 24:23
That's going to happen.
Jennifer: 24:24
Yeah. And then the turkeys, they have calcium deposits on their eggs. But what I wanted to, we kind of digress there for a second. So what I wanted to point out here was if you build The bird and don't try to rush the laying part of it. I know everybody's excited about the eggs because I'm going to tell you after, I don't even know how many years we are still excited about that first egg too. When out of that special bird or, the first basket full in the spring we, that excitement does not go anywhere. Or that, that really beautiful blue egg. We love those. So we understand that we're not trying to squish that we're just, you want the bird to be healthy. You want the bird to have the structure to pass those eggs correctly and live a long life. If it doesn't have structure, it could prolapse. It could become egg bound. You could have a lot of problems that way. So take the extra couple, three weeks, four weeks, whatever it takes, just leave them on the developer. When that bird's ready to lay, it's going to lay. It doesn't matter what food it's on. But you want to make sure that the. structure is being finished. Okay, so now we've got all that and if you still have a problem, such as soft shell eggs, the papers that I read said that your vitamin D3 and your calcium ratios were off. Because you need vitamin D in order to absorb calcium.
Carey: 26:02
It doesn't matter how much calcium you're giving them. If they don't have enough D3, their body will not use it.
Jennifer: 26:08
And then also potassium. Potassium was in there too. You can't use calcium either with the potassium. I don't understand all of that, but it said that all of those ratios had to be Exactly. So that's going to go to your feed quality. And don't just throw more mealworms at them. That's not going to fix it. Okay. So then we're going to talk about pimpled or rough eggs with the extra calcium on the outside of them. Now, Some birds like turkeys. Those are, that's just a Turkey egg. That's just how they come out. So don't be concerned with the calcium bumps on a Turkey egg. And occasionally those two old hens that I have laying around out there they lay calcium bumpy eggs. And that's going to be because of their age. Okay. So back to the beginning. What kind of chicken did you get? Did you get a production breed? What do you have? And then set your expectations. So if you're getting these bumpy eggs, is that coming from your 10 year old hen? If she's a 10 year old hen, as far as I'm concerned, she can lay whatever she wants to if she still wants
Carey: 27:28
to. I was gonna say, at 10 years, she earned her spot, you
Jennifer: 27:32
know what I use her eggs for? You could use them
Carey: 27:35
for anything, really.
Jennifer: 27:36
Nope, I give those eggs every morning to my chicks. Raw. to build up their immune system because those birds free range the entire farm and they've got 10 years of antibodies. Oh
Carey: 27:49
yeah, that's right.
Jennifer: 27:50
Yeah.
Carey: 27:51
That's how you get chick vigor.
Jennifer: 27:53
Yep, it is. So that's what I use those eggs for. We don't eat them. Those are all go back to the chicks. Okay, but the paper said that new castles and bronchitis can also cause Calcium deposits on your eggs.
Carey: 28:10
That's true.
Jennifer: 28:11
Though I think Newcastle's is more of like a western United States issue. We don't really have it over here too much.
Carey: 28:17
No.
Jennifer: 28:19
And then infectious bronchitis. I have personally never seen it. So you'll have to look that up if you didn't see if that's something you think you might have in your flock, maybe. Okay. Bloodstained eggs. I've seen that a lot on Facebook.
Carey: 28:36
Look, you go into that group we talked about earlier, people are like, oh my God, my poor chicken's going to die. Look at how it must be in so much pain. It may be the
Jennifer: 28:49
structure.
Carey: 28:50
It may be. But if got it and start laying eggs at 14, 15 weeks, instead of waiting until it fully developed, could be your fault.
Jennifer: 28:59
Technically, all that really happened was a broken blood vessel and an eggshell. That's technically all that really happened.
Carey: 29:07
Now that could be because you have some cannibalism going on. Because your feed ration ain't what it should be. You could have your ratios maybe off. You could have overcrowding. Because I have actually heard of cases where birds would, like there would be a rooster that was rough and he would peck at the vent. And he was rough on the birds. And one day somebody went out and the rooster was dead. The hen, the hens literally ganged up on it.
Jennifer: 29:45
That's where chicken math is going to get ahold of you. So if you get a coop that they say is built for eight to 10, that's really probably only six to seven. Make sure you don't overcrowd. So the bloodstain, that's could be young layer. Could be underdeveloped. It can be
Carey: 30:03
a lot.
Jennifer: 30:04
Yeah. If you're feeding too much protein, the eggs can be too large. So I was on another group the other day, another one of those large groups that I wasn't kicked out of yet. And she argued with me, but she was feeding hers a layer feed with black soldier fly. So and cut up pig livers. And I said, I know I hadn't heard that one before. That was a new one. And I said, that is way too much protein. And of course they all jumped on me and said, no, that's not true.
Carey: 30:35
If you're feeding, if you're buying that 15 bag of feed and you're mixing that stuff in with it, then yeah. But that's I saw one person That swore by feeding game bird lair, that's 24 to 26 percent usually to chickens
Jennifer: 30:53
too much.
Carey: 30:54
And I'm like, you're cooking that bird.
Jennifer: 30:57
Yeah, so you get those too big of an egg. If you're getting double yokers, triple yokers often, then, every once in a while something may happen, but if you're getting them consistently, then your protein is way too high.
Carey: 31:11
I was going to say double yokers, there's two things that cause double yokers consistently. Number one, really high protein. Number two genetics.
Jennifer: 31:25
Yeah, I have to be really careful with the quail on the double yokers. So yeah that's a thing there. Okay. Wrinkled eggs if you've never seen a wrinkled egg, they're cool actually crepe paper. Like maybe it came out wet and it had to dry, out in the air and it just wrinkled. Until you see. That's the only
Carey: 31:45
way to describe it is
Jennifer: 31:47
wrinkled. And when you see one, you'll be like, that's what they were talking about. But it's stressed. Infectious bronchitis again, defective shell gland or overcrowding. Yep. So stress is going to be like you moved it. Maybe you bought a new bird and brought them in. You added new birds. It could be something you don't even realize is going on. You might have an owl or a hawk or something perching on your run and terrorizing your birds, a neighbor's dog while you're gone. Rats. Rats on the roost. And I promise you, and don't turn us off when I say this, but I'm gonna upset some people. If you have birds You have rodents, whether you know it or not, they're out there.
Carey: 32:39
Yeah, I actually have found of my game roosters, he's in a pen with two hens and they're, they just hatched some chicks out. and I found a rather large sized rat dead in the pen and its belly was full. So I feel Tyrell is the name that the kids gave this particular bird. He watched and I'm guessing he got a little too close to the chicks and he did what he did. Yeah, if you have birds. Even if they're all inside of your barn, you have rats inside your barn.
Jennifer: 33:24
You just don't know it yet.
Carey: 33:25
Yeah, you just don't know
Jennifer: 33:26
it. If you have snakes, then you have rodents. Because the snakes are looking for food. And they're going to come where there's food for them. I found rats in my turkey pen. And how I found them was they were eating the tail feathers. They were running up underneath of them on the roost and eating the tail feathers, chewing them off. So yeah, that's crazy. Yep. So you just kinda, you have to be very observant and you don't always, don't set your expectations. It might be something that you were not expecting. I never would have dreamed the rats be eating my turkey feather tails.
Carey: 34:09
No, but they will.
Jennifer: 34:10
Yep, they sure will.
Carey: 34:12
They will also make eggs disappear.
Jennifer: 34:16
They do, or they'll take a bite out of them. Okay. So what are some other things that we have seen on we have this big graphic right here that we're looking at and I'm going to add it to the website with the podcast link. So you guys can read it. It's also on the. Poultry Breeder Nutrition Facebook group. It's up in the files is where I found it because that's where Keri stuffed it. You can find it there. What else is on here that people see?
Carey: 34:47
The different bands, a lot of times people say My egg looks like it's got bands on it. Like the old, like tie dye shirts, how they had the different circles around. The main thing that causes that is stress. And if you'll look at a lot of these this particular document is 20 common eggshell quality problems. Almost all of them, stress is one of the causes. And people, sometimes when I'm doing a visit at a farm, they're like this is what my eggs look like. Why? And I'm like your birds are stressed out. And they're like, how do you know? Let's look at them and the birds, they'll look stressed out. And this one particular one was a pretty large farm with no LGD and they had a donkey. And I'm like, dude, you need to get the donkey with the birds because you've got coyotes. Cause, cause I knew where we were and I knew that there were coyotes in the area. And he said, so donkeys, and you put chickens with donkeys. I said, man, that's the reason why a lot of chicken people have a donkey is, maybe their things don't work out with their LGD or whatever. But you get, if you have coyotes, you need a donkey, whether you have chickens, whether you have goats, even cows. My son he has on one of his farms, this doesn't have a house. It's just about 130 acres is fenced in. And he had actually had two calves that he had lost to coyotes. Gets him a donkey and he's found dead coyotes in his pasture.
Jennifer: 36:35
Don't mix donkeys and dogs. I haven't done it. Don't have firsthand knowledge, but I understand that it's not a good mix.
Carey: 36:44
No, because the donkey will think that the dog is something that shouldn't be there.
Jennifer: 36:49
I want a donkey so bad. We're getting off track, but I want a donkey so bad, but we have four LGDs out there now, so I can't. Your
Carey: 36:56
LGDs are bigger, your big, your LGDs. There's one or two of them that can get up on a donkey's back and take it down.
Jennifer: 37:05
Oh, yeah, easy.
Carey: 37:06
And that's probably what would happen. They're doing their job, though.
Jennifer: 37:10
So those white banded eggs that you were talking about, stress, or the change in lighting, which I find interesting. So if you just flip the lights on them, so they're gonna lay some weird eggs. The misshapen eggs is right next to it. Now I used the, I moved the breasts down to the barn a couple of days ago and let the, them up for 14 hours and went out there today to get see if she had laid me any eggs yet and sure enough there's one out there it looks like a torpedo. So it's working. It's got to work its way out.
Carey: 37:40
And, but if you look at one of the reasons why you have those torpedo eggs stress, why don't you took them out of their home, put them in a new home.
Jennifer: 37:49
I did.
Carey: 37:50
So
Jennifer: 37:51
they got to get up at three in the morning. Now,
Carey: 37:54
It is what it is. Another thing when we were talking about the bloodstain eggs is overweight. If your birds are too big, that's one of the reasons why molting is so important. And changing what you feed them when they molt. Because the whole, the purpose behind the molt is very important. Number one, it's designed for them to lose weight. And it's designed for them to lose those feathers so the new ones can grow in. But the birds, when they go through the molt and they get down to about that pullet weight, the way they were when they were younger, on the hens, that sets them up to start laying a whole lot again and gets them going. On the male birds, That this is a PG show, so I'm going to say that makes everything else work that slims them down and gives them the energy to do everything else that they need to do, and it will make your it'll make your fertility higher. After the moult when they're on a good moult ration and then you start feeding them really well after that. So that's important too.
Jennifer: 39:05
So it's like us losing our winter weight. Yeah, I want to do that one day. I want to moult.
Carey: 39:14
I lose my winter weight every year. Then, Thanksgiving's right around the corner. So it's fixing to start coming back.
Jennifer: 39:21
Yep, exactly.
Carey: 39:22
But I convince myself if I keep that cycle going, then I'll stay about what I am.
Jennifer: 39:28
Good for you. Let's not talk about that anymore. Okay, so I think that's pretty much all of the ones that we see on on Facebook, but there's a lot more on here. So once I get this up on the website check it out. Yeah, you can check it out. It was printed. We wanna give credit to altech.com is who made up the graphic that we're looking at. And they put down here at the bottom that they got a lot of the credit from the University of New England and Australia. So I make sure that people know that's where we got our information. But yeah, so I think that we're good on the eggshells today.
Carey: 40:05
All right. Thanks everybody. Y'all have a good one.
Jennifer: 40:08
Bye.
Thank you to AllTech for this poster!
