“Hello, Thank you so much for the wonderful email full of fabulous information that a City-girl turned Country-girl can appreciate! I have 10 hens each with names and each laying eggs that I can identify to the “mom”. Last week something spectacular appeared in a nest. I found a tiny 1 inch long brown egg along with 3 regular sized eggs!
It had all the color and markings of eggs from my largest hen Molly – a black Australorp. What in the world? Would this egg have developed into a tiny midget chick? My son thinks a crow flew in and laid an egg. what is the answer?” ~ Sally
Thanks for writing Sally.
Often times when a hen has just finished a molt she will lay a small egg like the one you described.
The mishap doesn’t persist.
In a previous newsletter we were discussing small and very large eggs and I mentioned that we had small eggs from time to time.
A subscriber wrote in to say that this was a common experience on their farm in the spring time when the hens started to lay again.
As I thought about it, I realized that our tiny eggs were in the spring also.
You didn’t mention where you are from but I wonder if it’s spring time.
Anyway, to answer your question about a small egg hatching, chances are that it would not have hatched.
Small eggs in general produce small chicks with a high mortality rate but in an egg that small, it’s unlikely the chick would have survived to hatch.
Thanks again for the question Sally.
