saving a flock

[Cindymf]

I acquired a flock of Red Stars last week. They came from well-meaning folks, but they fed them the grain they raise for their cattle ONLY. While the grain was organically raised, it was not balanced right at all. The hens are only 14 months old, had no room to move around, and molting heavily. Their egg production was down to about a dozen or two a day out of 80 hens. They had a foul (not fowl...lol) smell, bare bottoms, and skinny. I immediately gave them a beautiful acre pasture to roam in, our outstanding non GMO and organic local feed meant for layers, lots of fresh water and plenty of oyster shell. They went NUTS over the oyster shell. One week later they are dust-bathing, happy, filled out and giving me around 50 to 60 eggs a day. But here's my mystery question.... Red Stars lay a nice brown egg. These guys' eggs were a very light brown to begin with... but now their eggs are white!!! Maybe a light cream, but not at all brown! The shells have hardened up nicely, the yolks are nice and orange/dark yellow and firm (not runny as before) but WHITE!!! Could the oyster shell have done this?? Never encountered this before. Ideas???

 

[Perris]

well done for doing a fab job of rescuing those poor chickens

Re: your question, the brown colour is deposited on the shell just before laying, so if your hens have suffered deficiencies in their diet prior to rescue, they may be missing the materials necessary to make protoporphyrin. Now that they are on a proper diet I would expect the colour to return in due course.

 

[Clairemarie1982]

Sorry I don’t know the answer to this... but such a nice ending for these chickens to end up with you and being cared for correctly!

 

[Cindymf]

Thank you