It wasn't born without an egg. The egg hatched inside the mother hen. Lots of animals have young that way. It's called oviviparous.
I think it's very uncommon in chickens.
I don't think my girls would do that--they get treats for laying eggs every day...can't see them holding on for 21 days to get their favorite treats! Possible, yes, with manipulation, I guess, but, I prefer letting the girls behave in a more natural fashion.
I do know that one of the things that can kill a hen is if the egg gets stuck and doesn't come out. When I first got the girls, if I was short re: eggs, I was worried one of them was blocked--but of course, I wouldn't be able to tell which one hadn't laid, because I didn't know their eggs at that point. Now I can tell which hens have laid and which ones haven't....the eggs are each unique. Myrtle, btw, is competing with the phantom duck hen--her eggs are HUGE. She's one happy hen...I'm no expert but I suspect you don't need to train or reward hens to expel their eggs.
But seriously, say you had one less egg than chickens and knew which one it was, what would you do?
Survival of the fittest. If it happened too often the ones that do it would not produce as many offspring and whatever causes it would be bred out of their genes.
I'll admit that in all my years I've never wondered once, before this topic, what happens to chickens with stuck eggs!
A chicken only has one exit oriface, the cloaca. The reproductive tract does hook up with the intestines. But, for an egg to get into the intestines, it would have to go around a corner and upstream into the intestine.
TMI
The lethargy was the sign I was watching for--that and cold feet and a change in skin color until I figured out that only the Rhode Island Reds lay daily--the Buffs and the Plymouth Rocks take a day off (and not always Sunday) every week. And then there was also the issue of finding the hidden clutch...I found 13 eggs hidden in one clutch in December. Mine are pretty consistent and everyone has usually laid by 9:30 - 10 a.m. (I used to not let them out until they'd finished, now they go back in an lay in the nest boxes). I'm not as paranoid as I was when I first got the chickens. However, a friend posted on facebook this morning that a raccoon got into her hens' coop and killed two hens and 18 chicks....sad.
