Soft Shelled Eggs.

King Country Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 97, 4 September 1908, Page 4

Soft Shelled Eggs.

Poultry writers have been repeatedly toiling ns that ». it-shelled eggs were caused by an insufliencey of lime in the food consumed by the hen. Such, however, is ncrf the case. The soft-shelled egg is- a of arretted development, due to nervous interference with the functions of the oviduct. The laying of incompletely developed eggs corresponds to abortion in mammais, and can likewise be brought about by extreme mental disturbance. In experiments conducted at the Kansas Experimental station the writer was able to esuse the production of soft shelled eggs by continued excitement, of confined hens. It was also shown that the hen's system on an ordinary diet contains enough calcium carbonate for the formation of about; five or six eggs. If lime was withheld from the food, the hen, after having laid this number of eggs, will stop laying. When lime was given in limited quantities the hen laid apparently normal eggs, but only as frequently as the lime furnished would supply shell material. Careful weighings proved that eggs thus produced, though apparently normal, were actually thinner Shelled than normal eggs from the same hen. But little is known about the process and control of egg formation, and further study should yield facts of both scientific interest and practical bearnig.