Diet to Get Darker Blue Eggs Query

[sylviethecochin]

@BreanneRN Does your flock eat raw pumpkin or do you steam it? My girls sometimes will leave squashes unless I steam it or cut it into fairly small pieces. They love frozen watermelon though. Thanks!

I can't speak for Breanne, but we practically have to beat the hens away from the squash and the tomatoes with a stick.

 

[BreanneRN]

I usually put out pumpkins on the riper side, a little bit soft, and they eat it. In fact, I had some left over from the pumpkin season still in April, and I actually cut it open and fed it to my 8 week old new chickens this year... They gobbled it down... After they figured out it was edible. At 8 weeks they hadn't ever eaten anything that big or that looked like that! I had brought those pumpkins home from the family farm (we leased some bottom land to a pumpkin farmer) in November and they lasted all winter until I fed them to those chickens. I fed some to the sheep, they also will eat them. The horse will eat them but likes watermelon better. I didn't have chickens last year, but have in the past. The turkeys will eat them too. I am thinking this Kavbuz thing might be the bomb though! Usually, you can collect up quite a few pumpkins after Halloween and Thanksgiving and if they aren't too messed up, I will bring them home and feed them. Some of them just have to much foreign material, but some people don't do anything with them but set them on the porch. Have to be careful if you have sheep, they will eat the actual plants too. I had a pumpkin come up and next thing you know, it was gone.

 

[BreanneRN]

Come to think of it, I should go out and plant some pumpkins and some watermelons too!

 

[Taliasun]

I have watermelons coming along but haven't done any pumpkin yet this season. I don't think that I have any space for them at the moment. You said your neighbor has the watermelon/pumpkin hybrid growing? Did they cross pollinate themselves? That just sounds so interesting but I'm not sure my gardening skills are there yet.

 

[BreanneRN]

Not my neighbor, but a person on this forum that started a thread "What Plant Is This"? She had planted cucumbers, a Sugar Baby Watermelon and a small pumpkin last year, nothing this year, a volunteer came up, she thought it was a cucumber, but when it put on a melon like fruit, she wanted to find out what it was. It had squash leaves, but more watermelon blossoms, and the fruit, one of which had reached 4" in length looked mostly like a watermelon. (I have been trying to post a link to that thread, but I guess I don't know how that is done exactly, as it isn't working)...

 

[BreanneRN]

Anyway, you can find it if you do a search and change relevance to date on the drop down menu (otherwise too much other stuff comes up...

 

[townchicks]

Wow, lots of stuff to try. I gave my girls a pumpkin last fall, they wanted nothing to do with it. I might try again though. They will eat shredded carrots, but not crazy about them. I get lazy about grating stuff up, although I do it now and again for the doves. That Kavbuz thing sounds great, they love watermelon.

 

[BreanneRN]

Yes and apparently they get quite large, though I will be interested to see what happens with the accidental hybrid in that thread, because the watermelon was a small variety and the pumpkin was one of those 3 or 4" minis...

 

[Boonie Stomper]

Ok... Am late to this party but what the hey...
My experiment on an emaciated pullet expecing will be an EE was to give a little bit of my cooked chicken livers to it, after lurking & reading here earlier how good a boost it might be.
Well when I opened the store- bought liver tub, I discovered a gallbladder on one that had leaked green bile on that same liver. Ewww...
So set all that was green aside and lightly cooked it for the gal having no idea whether she'd go for it. About a Tsp of it with juices and a few pellets mashed in and it was a hit! Surprise!

It even seemed to stimlate the appetite.

So why not just feed gallbladder/bile directly to darken the blue eggs?

For sure if this girl makes it to laying, I'll try it!

 

[BreanneRN]

Don't guess you have ever eaten any gallbladder bile, it tastes really, really, bad.... When an animal is butchered one of the big precautions is to never cut the gallbladder and allow bile to leak onto the liver or other meat. I am always not too happy when I find a gallbladder in my chicken livers and I take that liver out before I try to remove it. I was having gallbladder problems for awhile and actually took bile salts as a supplement on occasion. Believe me, it is the worst tasting stuff ever. Don't think even the most desperate chicken would want to eat it. Though it can help you if you are having certain types of gallbladder issues.