The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[ki4got]

This may be a silly question, but how exactly do you crush egg shells to feed back to the chickens? Mine aren't laying yet, but I get eggs from someone else who has chickens (not from the store). I'm hoping they start laying soon! They'll be 20 weeks old on Monday.

I've been taking the shells and trying to scrape off the inside membrane under running water, then letting them dry. Then I just crush them with my hands, and keep crushing them with my fingers until they're somewhere in between the size of watermelon seeds and bell pepper seeds. Then I just pour them in a pile on the dirt.

Is that OK? Or should I be crushing them finer?

when I crack eggs for eating, I just put the halves in a bucket and let them dry. then crush them up with the flat end of the 'monster maul'. a tool of many uses... including crushing cans, crushing egg shells, crushing, well, anything that's crushable. including fingers and toes, so be careful when using one... it probably weighs every bit of 20 pounds, maybe more.

I also use it for making chick crumbles from the rooster pellets... babies don't 'get' FF the first couple days, so I give them something they will pick at.

forgot to mention, I don't pulverize the shells, just make them smaller pieces about the size of the oyster shell they get.

 

[Jewelwing]

What lala said

We don't do anything special. I crumble them with my hands a bit, or step on them, but that's it.

I guess you don't worry about them eating raw whites and then wanting to eat their own eggs? I thought I had read somewhere that that might be a problem, which was why I was diligently washing out every last speck of whites.

I'm wondering if I could build them a sun porch next fall from old windows. SHould be a way to hinge the windows to form the roof....set it on haybales....presto a sun porch! wouldn't have to do it if I was willing to shovel the whole run....laziness is a bad trait.

Haha, yeah! You know the expression "necessity is the mother of invention", right? Well, I think laziness must be the father!

I like to put mine in the oven at 220 degrees for 5-10 minutes. They will shatter much easier without the membrane holding them together. They cool instantly, and I put them into a freezer bag and crunch them with a jar to the same size you do, then store them in the freezer bag and add to it. Mine like to eat them like scratch when I throw them out.

Oh, I could so do that. I don't like to turn on my electric oven if I don't have to, but I could easily put them in my bake oven attached to my masonry heater. I light a fire in there once or twice a day, so the bake oven gets warm whether I'm cooking something or not. I could easily slip in the eggs shells for a bit. Thanks!!

Do you rinse out the whites first? When I tried microwaving the egg shells so I wouldn't have to clean out the whites, it seemed to make a bigger mess because the whites got hard and stuck everything together. Then I had an even harder time breaking them up! Maybe it wouldn't be that way in the bake oven.

when I crack eggs for eating, I just put the halves in a bucket and let them dry. then crush them up with the flat end of the 'monster maul'. a tool of many uses... including crushing cans, crushing egg shells, crushing, well, anything that's crushable. including fingers and toes, so be careful when using one... it probably weighs every bit of 20 pounds, maybe more.

I also use it for making chick crumbles from the rooster pellets... babies don't 'get' FF the first couple days, so I give them something they will pick at.

forgot to mention, I don't pulverize the shells, just make them smaller pieces about the size of the oyster shell they get.

Could someone post a picture so I can see what size you're crushing them to? I've never given them oyster shell, so I don't know what that looks like. Should I be giving them both?

 

[fosterson]

The crows are back!!! Yeah. I saw a huge hawk fly through my canyon 2 days ago.... Heard the crows yesterday and just saw them chase off a huge hawk!! Well done crows!! Now how do I keep them here

Plant a pecan tree.

 

[ki4got]

Quote: feeding eggs won't make chickens want to eat eggs, IMO. but just to be safe, if they don't LOOK like the eggs in the nest, then all the better. so shells I crush up, eggs I scramble.

I save my shells in a 1 gallon ice cream bucket (many many uses for these things) and when the shells start getting near the top then I crush them down. you can see white, blue and brown eggs mixed together. LOL I also add egg shells from hatched chicks too, since most eggs I get go to the incubator, not food. LOL
if the pieces are too big, the birds peck them down to a usable size.


shown with the monster maul for size comparisson

 

[Scott H]

Quote:
Oh....yeah, a heat lamp would turn that into a sauna....

 

[fosterson]

Oh....yeah, a heat lamp would turn that into a sauna....

Ooh. Steamed hen!

My dozen+ chooks in their 35sqft sleeping coop turn that place into a sauna. My DL was going GREAT till we got this spate of 90%+ humidity for the last week. Man, I'm burning through the bedding right now. Can't wait for it to get less humid again!

 

[Jewelwing]

feeding eggs won't make chickens want to eat eggs, IMO. but just to be safe, if they don't LOOK like the eggs in the nest, then all the better. so shells I crush up, eggs I scramble.

I save my shells in a 1 gallon ice cream bucket (many many uses for these things) and when the shells start getting near the top then I crush them down. you can see white, blue and brown eggs mixed together. LOL I also add egg shells from hatched chicks too, since most eggs I get go to the incubator, not food. LOL
if the pieces are too big, the birds peck them down to a usable size.


shown with the monster maul for size comparisson

Thanks! The ice cream bucket was the best size comparison for me. Not that I'm familiar with their size.....

 

[ki4got]

Quote:
well, it does have a wire vent near the top along one whole side (2" x 48" roughly) so there's plenty of ventilation but only 8 sq ft of floor space, so with that many chicks, it'll stay toasty I think. then they have 24 sq ft of pen to play in during the day. again not HUGE amount of space, but better than the 2x4 brooder they were all in until yesterday. LOL and a few will be moving out sooner than later too, as a couple are going to Knoxville with me on Saturday, the cochin roo will be going into his breeding pen once I have the doors and roof on it with his new girls, and the bantam blrw will also be going to her new pen soon too (and the cockerel is for sale since I still have his sire). and the SFH cockerels will be put to free ranging once they've gotten used to being outside for a couple weeks...

 

[aaggjg]

Who was it that was asking if it was normal for the hens to sunbathe? Mine fight for a sunny spot!

After I took this I looked up to see 4 more bathing beauties just up from these girls in the coop!

 

[fosterson]

Who was it that was asking if it was normal for the hens to sunbathe? Mine fight for

After I took this I looked up to see 4 more bathing beauties just up from these girls in the coop!

Aww.

Yeah. My 'big girls' will do this. The little barreds don't seem to 'get' sunbathing but the big red hens LOVE to lounge!