Ever Have A Problem With Your Feathered Friends Eating Eggs Or Laying Soft Shells?

Ms Clucky

Crowing
5 Years
Jan 22, 2019
791
2,067
251
Salem, Illinois
Have you ever had a problem with your chickens eating the eggs or laying soft shells? I had this problem. That's right, had is the key word. I think I found a solution.
Here's what I do.
First I go buy a head of cabbage, two cucumbers, a pint of cherry tomatoes and a can of unsalted corn.
Next I put a large bowl of laying mesh in a really huge glass bowl with a cup of grit.
Then I cut my cabbage into and put one half back in the fridge. I cut the cabbage up into small chunks and I use my ninja to make the cabbage like a runny slop.
I put that in my feed bowl.
Then I do the same with my cucumbers, tomatoes and corn.
Then I get a skillet and put some veg. grease in it and melt it. I crack about twenty eggs and put the shells in a bowl and put them in the microwave for about two minutes. { they will smell up the microwave and your house for a few minutes}.
While the shells are cooking, I cook the eggs leaving a little bit of yolk uncooked.
After the eggs and shells are done, I put the eggs in fridge to cool while I am crushing the shells in my ninja. { make sure ninja is dry before crushing shells}
Make sure shells are a fine dust.
I sprinkle the shells a little at a time while mixing all the ingredients up.
When the eggs are cool, I put them in the ninja and throw them in the mix.
Here is where you have to put your meatloaf mixing talent to use. I mix all the ingredients up by hand making sure that that the eggs are not in big clumps. When everything is mixed up well, I put the whole bowl in a trash bag, close it up and put it in the fridge. When I feed it to my chickens I usually wait when it's going to get really cold that night and put about 6 large spoons { depending on how many chickens you have} in a separate bowl and microwave it for a minute to get the chill off. I wait until about a half an hour before they go to bed so that their crawls are full and warm inside before I give it to them.
They love it!
 
Whenever I've had that problem I just made sure they were eating the oyster shell that's available. So far, that has always taken care of it. :)
Sounds like alot of work.
Ditto Dos^^^

Not sure it's good idea to feed warm food in a cold climate right before roost time....
...think condensation on combs and wattles.

Crops filled with a good dry chicken ration will keep them warm inside.
 
To me an egg eater is a chicken that purposely opens an egg to eat it. Many chickens will eat an egg that has already been opened. I don't consider that an egg eater, just a chicken taking advantage of an available food source.

I had an egg eater once, a hen that opened eggs to eat. It was later summer and they were free ranging, no reason to be bored and plenty of forage. It was late enough in the season that I had some of that spring's pullet starting to lay. I think she learned to open eggs when a pullet laid from the roost and the egg broke on the droppings board. Luckily I was able to figure out which it was so I could eat her before she taught any of the others that were helping her eat the eggs once she broke them.

I have almost never had a mature hen lay a soft or thin shelled egg regularly. I can only remember one. When I figured out which one she was eaten. There are too many good hens out there for me to put up with a defective one. But mine are not pets.

I occasionally have a pullet just starting to lay that will lay a soft or thin shelled egg as she gets the kinks out of her internal egg making factory. Mine practically always get it straight in a few days. Just be patent, pullets often work it out if you let them.

When I have a problem I try to decide if it is a flock wide problem or an individual hen problem. If the rest of the flock is doing great I'm not going to risk messing that up by treating them all for a problem only one hen is having. One hen eating eggs is not a flock wide problem, I'm not going to butcher them all when it's only one. One hen laying a thin-shelled egg is not a flock wide problem, either she is not eating the calcium that is available to them all or her body doesn't process the calcium she eats properly. I'm not going to try to trick all my hens into eating excess calcium which could cause health problems for them just because something is wrong with one hen. I try to solve for he benefit of my flock, not just one chicken. But mine are not pets.
 
Really I do it for me. I love to spoil them. I haven't had any problems with frostbite on their waddles or combs other than one really cold night last year. I wasn't feeding it to them then. Also Tripod, the one that I need to rehome got frostbite on one of his toes and lost it cause his mother only had one baby and she really didn't keep him very warm. The lost toe doesn't affect his relationship with the ladies though. He is really pretty. His is a Bantam Red Pyle mixed with I think BB Red. I can't upload a pic, but you can go on to Facebook and see him. He is red and white with little black specks all over the white. Sooo pretty.
 
When they were babies, I would mix up baby food, crushed up crickets, the tops of broccoli and wet it a little. They went crazy over it. Of course now they expect it, so if it isn't out there, they think they are getting starved. Little pigs!🐖
 

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