Fairy Egg, Regular Egg and DoubleYolker – photo by Jen Pitino

My newest flock members (a set of five pullets – three Blue Bresses and two Sulmtalers) are not all laying quite yet.  The Sulmtaler pair, (which I’ve named Frick and Frack) is definitely laying semi-regularly.  The Blue Bresse hens though are much smaller than the Sulmtalers and not laying at all.  Well, not laying at all until recently.  

Fairy Egg – photo by Jen Pitino

This week, I was cleaning the pullets’ tractor when I found a very strange, marble-sized egg in an odd corner of their coop.  This tiny egg is rough on the outside, as though the eggshell mechanism inside the hen that laid it was not quite calibrated correctly.

Colloquially, these itty-bitty eggs are commonly known as “fairy eggs” or “witch eggs.” Usually, “fairy eggs” do not contain a yolk. Research revealed that fairy eggs (such as the one I found) are most commonly found with young hens who are just starting to

Rough Surface of Fairy Egg – photo by Jen Pitino

come into lay and their reproductive systems are still doing some fine tuning.  The immature hen’s body simply failed to release an oocyte (i.e. ovum that becomes the yolk) before her reproductive tract began producing the egg to enclose it. 

Fairy eggs though less common in fully mature hens, can occur in rare cases where a bit of reproductive tissue detach and stimulate the egg-production glands to treat the loose material as if it were a yolk and create an egg around it.  In such situations, the egg will contain in its membranes grayish particles of tissue.  

Fairy Egg v. Double Yolker – photo by Jen Pitino

Battery hens, as a result of having had tremendous pressure placed upon their egg-laying systems, are also susceptible to laying fairy eggs as they age. In such cases, the battery hen’s fairy eggs will often actually contain a yolk, a tiny, little yolk.  Fairy eggs containing puny yolks sometimes occur with a well-treated, mature hen when there is a disruption to her laying cycle.  

Generally, fairy eggs should not cause you great concern for your hen.  It is usually the product of her body taking care of a need or resetting her egg-laying rhythm.  So don’t worry if you find one of these fairy eggs in your own coop!

Here is a video of some Fairy Eggs being cracked open:

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