thin egg shells

[BushHog936]

Not if they don't look like egg shells. Or taste, for that matter.

 

[kc9ioh]

i am haven a problom i thank they are eating there eggs i have 6 road iland reds to red cochins hens and on red cochin roster in on pin ,
in anther pi i have one black cochin roster and 2 cochin hens

ian another pin i have 1 bar rock hen and 1 barrock rooster
and get to eggs a day one from red cochin pen and 1 from black cochins pin i feed them crash mix and a laying pelit what am i doing wrond

 

[zoran_12]

maybe you are giving them too much salt...i heard that it can be reason for thin eggshell

 

[DIMBY]

None of my 7 hens will eat the oyster shells "free thrown" - so, I mix up a 1/4 cup or so with oatmeal, rice or their greens, whichever they get for their afternoon 'snack'. I'll also mix up the eggshells, too, instead of the oyster shell when I have them. Must be working, except for a few 'false starts' when my young hens began to lay, no soft shells.

 

[ShaggysGirl]

Mine have only been laying for a few weeks mostly great thick shells but we did have one shell-less. I have oyster shell in a small pail that is hanging and they eat Kent multi flock. I might one day switch to layer pellet but the layer has less protein so I may stay with the multi flock.

 

[terri9630]

My girls have free choice oyster shells but they don't seem to be eating it and some of the egg shells are very thin. They break when you pick them up. Is there anything else that can be used? I already give them the shells I use but I sell most of the eggs so I don't have a lot to give back. I have 9 RIR's and one EE and have been getting between 6 and 9 eggs a day. It would be great if the shells were a bit thicker.

 

[SC_Hugh]

Mine started out with good solid egg shells and then shells got soft

it was such a sad few days for me to bring in broken soft eggs

Even though the oyster shell was nearby, they weren't eating enough, so I mixed in some extra oyster shell into their layer feed and added some crushed egg shells in tiny pieces. No more soft shells.

Sometimes free choice isn't enough to do the trick, you have to mix it in,

--Hugh

 

[cybercat]

How to feed eggshells back to chickens. First keep all eggshells from eggs you use. Let them dry out if you need to microwave them to dry out. Then crush them to smaller pieces, many use a morter and pestle for this. How you feed them back is up to you. I use the throw off the balcony others put it on there feed. Nevery had a problem with egg eating for they do not know they are eggs.

 

[terri9630]

I put the oyster shells in the coffee grinder to make the pieces smaller to see if they would like the smaller pieces better. There were some pretty big chunks in there.

 

[gardenside]

I was having the same problem - many of the eggs laid had very thin shells and many were being broken in the nest. I was feeding a mix of good quality laying pellets, scratch and oyster shell and couldn't understand why the shells were so thin.

It seems that several of my girls prefer the scratch to the laying pellets, and they don't care for oyster shell either. The solution was to feed them only the laying pellets in the morning so they have to eat that or nothing. Later in the afternoon I give them a snack of scratch or let them run around the yard and forage. The eggs all have nice, thick shells now and we didn't have to stop feeding scratch. I may quit feeding oyster shell when my last bag runs out and see what happens - it didn't seem to help at all.

(2 Buff Orphingtons, 3 Black Australorps, 4 Barred Rock & 1 RI Red)