Shell-less eggs.

Is there such a thing? Indeed there is, and Audrey has given us three of them within the last couple of weeks. Audrey is the last-chicken-standing from our original group of chickens from last summer. Her other coop-mates met dismal fates last year: Edie tried to catch a baby frog and drowned in the fountain. Dolly, HennyPenny, and Jaye were taken either by coyotes or hawks. And the two Guinea hens-- we gifted those noisy birds to a neighbor who actually wanted them. So that left Audrey, on her own for a couple of months until we got the three new hens-- Scarlett, Prissy, and Mammy.

Audrey never did lay eggs last year, even though Dolly and HennyPenny were laying eggs on a daily basis. Edie and Jaye didn't last long enough to get to their egg-laying stage, and the Guinea hens were too focused on making a racket and pecking a hole in the back door screen.

This go-round with the hens, Scarlett, Prissy, and Mammy are all laying eggs, one each per day, with the occasional exception of Mammy missing a day here and there. A couple of weeks ago, there was a very small egg in one of the nesting boxes where Audrey had been sitting-- which was a surprise in itself because she never got up into those boxes. When she left the nesting box, the egg in there was half the size of a ping-pong ball, with a soft outside that split open as soon as I touched it. The inside of that rubber-y shell was half-filled with what looked like a normal egg-white. A week later, there was Audrey in the nesting box again.... and within an hour she left another rubbery-soft egg, a little bigger than the first one. The inside was again filled with the gooey white stuff. A few days later-- another soft egg from Audrey-- but full-sized, and this one had a yolk along with the white. I didn't want to cook that egg-- I wasn't completely trusting of those soft rubbery shells. When I was telling my friend J about Audrey's mysterious eggs, she said they might be "menopausal" eggs because we thought that Audrey was an older hen, past her egg-laying days.

I searched my chicken books and the Internet. Both talked of these "shell-less eggs," laid by hens who were either too young to lay "good" eggs, too overweight, or too old. I don't think Audrey meets the first two requirements. Yesterday, there was Audrey in the nesting box again. When I checked half an hour later, there was a pale blue/green egg in the box-- this time with a hard shell (a "real" egg) but with sort of an odd shape. It was wider at the bottom than the top (which is about the norm) but the top came nearly to a point, and there was a crease running around the width of it, about an inch or less from the top. The shell was definitely hard, a real shell, and the color of the shell is consistent with her breed (an Araucana).

I haven't cracked open Audrey's first hard-shell egg. I keep the eggs in numbered cartons, and use the oldest ones first. When it's time to use the eggs from this week, I'm sure Audrey's blue/green-shelled egg will have the usual yolk and white inside of it, regardless of it's misshapen form. I have no idea why Audrey has decided to lay eggs again. I still think she's an older hen than the other three, but maybe she's just trying her best to use up whatever eggs are left inside her, menopausal or not.