Hens and Cheese

[HayleyB]

It is interesting though cause birds are omnivores and scrap for the slugs and snails I throw over.

My uncle had a pig farm when I was a kid and used to collect the food leftovers from Cleo Lane's 'Stables' as swill for the pigs - never get away with that now.

During the war there were posters (before my time but I've seen them) telling people to feed the kitchen leftovers to chooks....

My girls are spoilt but do me well by return, the occasional 'bad' thing is given occasionally but not on a regular basis, and they love grapes but haven't had any for a month or two (too many other greens available to scavenge). They had soaked cous cous yesterday and they loved it especially the mediterranean one they were seriously out of date dried packets I found in the larder but not harmful probably bland but they didn't care

[Hilary B]

Fish isn't actually forbidden anyway is it? I used to scrounge scrap from the fishmonger for our pigs, at the time when you needed a license for 'waste food', which meant anything with (or potentially with) meat content. It was before they stopped pigs having meat-and-bone-meal (to prevent it being fed to cattle and sheep) but I never bought that anyway.
Pigs, like chooks, are natural omnivores (in fact fish is one of the few things that would almost never feature in a 'wild' diet for either).

[frias]

One of the main reasons for laying soft eggs is down to lack of grit or calcium. Go to the pet shop and buy oyster grit and feed that as a suppliment to their feed. Sprinkle it on the floor and let then peck at it is fine.

My chooks have grit and oyster shell mixed in with their pellets, in separate bowls and sprinkled on the floor but we still get softies. They also get baked crushed eggshells, limestone flour and even a very expensive calcium supplement from the vet but I think soft eggshells might be something that happens with some ex-batts depending on what sort of life they had before.

[MaureenHall]

Many ex-batts also suffer from osteoporosis so all the extra calcium they're getting is going to help strengthen already weakened bones. Are you giving them some cod liver oil as well? That's supposed to help with the calcium absorption (I think!)


Edit to answer Frias - yes love, I did mean you

[frias]

Yep, cod liver oil too. (did you mean me Maureen?)

[bluemoon]

I agree about free-range eggs being a marketing ploy, I know someone who always sticks with a particular brand "because they're free-range so the yolks are such a lovely colour". This 'lovely colour' is a sickly fluorescent orange from yolk pigmenters, yet people think it's natural. They also don't understand that if you're one of several thousand hens in a huge barn the chances of you even noticing that a tiny pop-hole door is open, never mind being tempted through it, are remote. I read somewhere that in most 'free-range' units only a tiny percentage of hens ever stepped outside and those that did tended to be the same ones every time. What I mean by free-range and what the egg industry means by it are two different things entirely. I do buy chicken-feed and my hens eat mostly that as I want to ensure that they're properly fed, but if I can give them the odd treat I do. It's difficult to judge if a chicken is 'happier', but instinctively, if only by their enthusiastic reaction to different foods, I feel that they are if their diet has some variety.

[HayleyB]

Enthusiastic is an understatement, anything I throw over in the afternoons is beseiged by a bunch of veloceraptors