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Mel (& Paul)

Getting grit into your chickens

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I have copied these tips from Noeglu and Lesley-Jean - a good way of giving things to chooks

 

 

 

noeglu wrote:

If you have chickens of about 1 year old and they have a spell of not eating enough grit, (like my Henrietta has decided to do and has ended up laying a few soft shelled eggs).

 

You should save some leftover mashed potato and mix in a few medecine spoonfuls of grit in it. Then get the culprut on her own and give the the others some distraction feed. And she will eat it and get grit into her system. It seems to work, as I did this yesterday with Henrietta and she thought it was just normal mash.

Lesley Jean wrote:

I find you can feed your hens all sorts of benificial things in some porridgey mash made from pellets/potatoe/oats etc.

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Wow!

I feel honoured about this! It really does work though as Henrietta my year old Black Rock started to lay softies last week then laid 2 proper ones by herself and then another softie which broke on the floor of there house. Since I gave her the grit mix she's laid two hard eggs!

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I just pop my egg shells in at the bottom of the oven whenever I've already got the oven on for something - just for about 5 minutes or so - it saves wasting the gas, putting the oven on specially!

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We got our three a big bag of chicken grit (oyster shells and little stones) they love the little stones but won't even touch the shells!

 

btw: there are two types of grit soluble: the stuff that gets made into eggs. and insoluble: floats around in their belly and grids up food (like roughage)

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No, ours don't free range - we have sprinkled extra in the grass in their run but they don't seem that interested. Have just baked 3 eggshells and sprinkled on their pellets. I hope I don't have to keep doing that!

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Grit is needed to help them digest food, baked egg shells gives them extra calcium for shell production. You can buy mixed grit with oyster shell (for calcium) preprepared that some people leave in a dish in the run. If you girls look healthy and lay hard shelled eggs, i wouldn't worry to much about adding extra.

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I get really brittle shells from my girls and have tried oyster shell (they spit it out :shock: ).

Will try the mashed potato method though! They LOVE pasta and I have tried mixing it with that. But the shell is left in the bottom.

 

I must say I didn't realise that they could eat whole potatoes!

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I get really brittle shells from my girls and have tried oyster shell (they spit it out :shock: ).

Will try the mashed potato method though! They LOVE pasta and I have tried mixing it with that. But the shell is left in the bottom.

 

I must say I didn't realise that they could eat whole potatoes!

 

Give them Limestone Flour.

 

It does the trick beautifully.

 

It is powdered calcium carbonate...available at equine suppliers.

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