CatCohen
Chirping
- May 5, 2015
- 48
- 11
- 67
My chickens just started laying about a month ago. First one, then the next for a few weeks. Last week I found an empty, eaten egg on the ground. Yesterday (so about 5 days after the first incident) an egg was in the garden, eaten. As we did some gardening, I saw near one of our trees the tiniest egg ever. After posting a picture I was assured it was a chicken egg and not a quail egg (we have a ton of quail)
Went onto another message board and someone suggested putting out eggs with mustard in them to train them to dislike the taste of eggs. Sure as heck I observed one chick (she seems to have become the alpha) eating the shell and while not liking the mustard, not hating it either. So I took those out.
This morning I went out to find 2 eggs (first time ever.) One was in the box all nice and warm. The other, bigger egg (possibly from my one sweet and now egg eating alpha RIR) on the floor eaten.
So I tried the mustard route. Nope. We researched and it was suggested we add oysters shells to their diet. Just put out the shells, they will eat them (they do) and they will have eggs with super hard shells.
Well the people who built our coop and another friend who raises chickens said never feed them shells. Mindy (coop lady) went on to say she never gives her chickens oyster shells either and they never ate their eggs.
Since we put them outside we have saved egg shells (store bought but still organic) ground them to fine powder and added it to their meal for the calcium. Oyster shells are a recent addition. Today we are going to buy hard wooden eggs so they can't get into them and hopefully get frustrated. Any other thoughts?
They get layer feed, also organic or non-gmo. We actually switched to non-gmo a while ago because the organic had soy protein. I cannot have non-fermented soy in my diet. (Breast cancer survivor for everyone's info. Ladies, be careful about your soy)
Today we are getting a new organic feed that has no soy protein.
Help!!!!!
Went onto another message board and someone suggested putting out eggs with mustard in them to train them to dislike the taste of eggs. Sure as heck I observed one chick (she seems to have become the alpha) eating the shell and while not liking the mustard, not hating it either. So I took those out.
This morning I went out to find 2 eggs (first time ever.) One was in the box all nice and warm. The other, bigger egg (possibly from my one sweet and now egg eating alpha RIR) on the floor eaten.
So I tried the mustard route. Nope. We researched and it was suggested we add oysters shells to their diet. Just put out the shells, they will eat them (they do) and they will have eggs with super hard shells.
Well the people who built our coop and another friend who raises chickens said never feed them shells. Mindy (coop lady) went on to say she never gives her chickens oyster shells either and they never ate their eggs.
Since we put them outside we have saved egg shells (store bought but still organic) ground them to fine powder and added it to their meal for the calcium. Oyster shells are a recent addition. Today we are going to buy hard wooden eggs so they can't get into them and hopefully get frustrated. Any other thoughts?
They get layer feed, also organic or non-gmo. We actually switched to non-gmo a while ago because the organic had soy protein. I cannot have non-fermented soy in my diet. (Breast cancer survivor for everyone's info. Ladies, be careful about your soy)
Today we are getting a new organic feed that has no soy protein.
Help!!!!!