You might try letting them run out of eggshells completely. Mine wouldn't eat any oyster shell if they had eggshells or thought some was coming but would if they didn't. I don't like that option very much but I don't like thin shells either.
Or take the premise of this thread - offer at least...
Learning something every day....
"...At a given pH level, more lime is needed on fine-textured clayey soils than on coarse-textured sandy soils because the fine-textured soils have more exchangeable hydrogen and aluminum (potential acidity). Soils high in organic matter need more lime than...
Well, no. We do throw damaged pieces of drywall out on a handy field. That is pretty much pure gypsum wrapped in paper, at least it was years ago when that drywall was bought. But I don't think we'ved used gypsum otherwise. We use calcium carbonate mostly. Gypsum is calcium sulfate.
I don't...
Coffee grounds are absorbent. A whole lot more than wood shavings are.
Y'all don't have coffee shops around there?
Even McDonalds goes through 250 to 300 cups per day (average per location).
Some managers are happy to find an alternative to putting the grounds in a landfill and some people...
It is interesting to see the opposite side of calcium-in-the-soil issues. My land tends to be acidic because the rain dissolves the calcium and it filters down through the sand until it is below the roots of most plants. I'm not sure if the rain/filter mechanism is what caused it to be acidic in...
I find many points very interesting. One that stands out is that they pick up shells, as grit apparently despite having alternatives. I don't know how different your sand/clay soils are from places I've lived.
I've lived on top of glacier deposits most of my life. All of the surface soil as far...
I didn't have problems in the brooder. I'm not sure if that is because it didn't stick to their feet much or if I expected more of that than most people.
At two weeks, I was still changing their bedding pretty often - several times a day, I think. I only had chicks once and its now been long...
It isn't too much info for me. My son-in-law is a native of the carribean - a remote village in the mountains of the Dominican Republic rather than one of the coral islands but much of what you describe is close to what he or my daughter have told me.
Thank you for explaining
Very interesting, CabritaChicks! Thank you.
When you say everyone on the island has a massive issue with calcium and sodium, and spends a fortune trying to correct it.... do you mean what y'all are eating or amending the soil to get plants to grow?
I'm in a similar climate. I didn't hear about sand contributing to frostbitten feet.
I tried sand about 3" deep on the drop board one year. I hated it in the winter because it built up into a cone under each favorite roosting spot and it was impossible to do anything with it. This despite...
I lean toward all of the above are factors. Probably, any one factor could be all of the difference in some cases but most a probably a combination of these and others.
Another part of what else is being eaten is that the calcium that is absorbed is handled differently within the bones, blood, kidneys, and maybe other tissues depending on what else is going on in the body (which is usually related to nutrients in this case). Milk fever is not a calcium...
Another possibility is you aren't seeing quite what you think you are seeing.
Are they pecking the coral? Or bits of edibles on the coral. If they are pecking the coral itself, do all parts of the coral have the same calcium composition?
Are they as healthy as you think they are? As prey...
I think there is something to what you are saying about calcium being one piece of the puzzle.
I've been doing quite a lot of research about osteoporosis in people and have a dairy farm background. One of the things about calcium is that what else is eaten when calcium is eaten has a lot to do...
You can make an insulated box by laying the box in the picture (or a smaller box) on its side and putting containers of hot water around it. Milk jugs will work or liter or 2 liter bottles or quart bottles to hold the water. If you wrap the water containers with towels or layers of newspaper, it...