Very thin egg shells...

[thepopela]

Help needed,

We feed our chickens layers mash, let them roam the garden for a few hours a day for other bits and bobs, and also veg peel when we have some, we also crush up the shells from the eggs we eat and mix it with their food.(was told to do this) but our one chicken is laying eggs with very thin shells and sometimes laying them in the run on the ground?
What am i doing wrong?

[Nicos]

I do what you do and still get the occasional thin shell.
I'm wondering if there are less insects about.
I took a tip from someone on the Vine- about adding a bit of codliver oil to their mash every couple of days ( too much apparently makes the egg smell fishy)
Do you leave out crushed oyster shell for them to help themselves to?

Sesame seeds and broccoli are high in calcium- and I think apricots - but they're a bit expensive to be giving other than treats

Might be worth nipping into your local health food shops and askig if they can put aside any out of date sesame and apricot packets!!!!
If you just feed them to her then it wouldn't be too expensive

[thepopela]

Na, dont give them oyster shell, where can you buy that from??

[Nicos]

I get small bags from a farm supplies shop. There'll be one somewhere near you. bags of chook feed tend to be cheeper there too.
Have you asked for some from where you get your chook food from now- you may just not have noticed it on a shelf.
Not expensive.

[Suechooks]

Na, dont give them oyster shell, where can you buy that from??

Somewhere like Country Store or Wynnstay Farmers will stock it or as Nicos says any agricultural store. You can buy bags of Mixed Poultry Grit which contain shell as well as insoluble grit. I've had one and it lasted 4 years!

[mamas-inc]

Na, dont give them oyster shell, where can you buy that from??

I get it from pets at home stores

[thepopela]

thanks all, will be getting some today!

[jessmorris]

Are you a vetenary surgeon, chicken vet? (I realise now that I have no idea how to spell vetinerary ). If you are a vet, I think you will get inundated by questions as soon as people come across you on the forum...............!
JM

[Flummery]

I crush up eggshells into fine powder and add it. I can't recognise it as eggshell myself and I'm sure the chickens can't - we've never had a broken eggshell. I understood that they were able to absorb this more readily than from, for example, oyster grit.

[frias]

I bake the eggshells and put through a coffee grinder. This gets added to their porridgy mix every day and don't think the girls would recognise the eggshells. (None of them egg eat anyway.)

[Nicos]

Same here- finely crushed and they really have no idea what they are eating