Feeding Laying Chickens

[sheaviance1]

I offer mine both. I keep a little chicken/sunflower coffee cup on the counter. When I use the egg, I rinse out the shell and let it dry for a day. Then I crush it up and put it in the cup. When it's full, it's off to the coop I go. I can tell you that I purchased a very small bag of oyster shell when the girls were brought home last year. I still have 3/4 of a bag. I have refilled the little dog bowl one time in a year. Everytime I take the eggshells out there and spread them around, they are gone within 24 hours. They don't get all their shells back, my tomatoes get some, and I give eggs away. I do have one person (my stepson) who knows that I give the shells back to the girls, and he has been keeping them for me too.

 

[Carolyn]

I have always fed egg shells to my hens as did my mom and grandmother. I see absolutely no association with doing this and egg eating. I don't always bake the shells but try to always crush them but some have been dropped in without being crushed. I did have egg eating and feather plucking in the first flock I raised. It started at the end of winter and they were in a house with a run that by the books had adequate square footage. I tried several methods to break them and got so disgusted that I opened the run and decided if they were taken predators I really didn't care that much. That did not completely solve the problem with that flock but it greatly improved it, especially the egg eating. I have always allowed at least some free ranging since (limited to the 150 ft covered by my electric net fence right now) and have never had a reoccurance of the problem. I have had a bag of oyster shells for 4 years and my hens have yet to consume the last 1/3 of it.

I also feed nearly all my kitchen scraps to the chickens except for chicken. I keep an ample supply of leaves for them to scratch around. They make the most wonderful compost in less time and with no work for me. They get paid back with garden surplus. Last year almost everyone had problems with blossum end rot on their tomatoes which is partially from lack of calcium in the soil.....I have no problem with it and attribute that to that wonderful compost.

 

[foux003]

Quote:
Yes I agree with you! My dad had about 1 thousand layers here when I was a little kid and he always said not to feed egg shells to the hens. As you said egg eating is a hard habit to break.

foux003

 

[briteday]

I also buy one 50-pound bag of oyster shell per year...32 hens. And I generally give my neighbor 5-10 pounds that I have left over for his 6 hens. I also recycle egg shells, feed as much dark leafy greens as I can find for the hens (even grow some in the veggie garden just for them each summer), and feed a high quality layer feed that should provide as much calcium as they need. Although part of the year we have a mixed age flock (when we put the new chicks/pullets out each Spring/Summer) so we end up feeding Flockraiser or gamebird starter mixed with scratch...no calcium in those so that's when we use a lot of the oyster shells.

 

[foux003]

When I was in High School I had a full time job at a local Feed and Grain Mill. We did over 200 tons a week in an old batch mixer. We didn't have a pellet machine every thing except the dog food was mash, meal. or whole grains. We mixed calcium CaCO3 in the form of ground limestone in every batch of feed.

foux