Feeding eggshells to your chickens

There are many articles and blog posts about giving calcium supplements to your chickens. Egg laying is a real drain on calcium, and all chicken keepers will have encountered the odd wierd softie in the nest box, or inadvertently put their finger through the shell of an oh-so-fragile egg.

Dry the eggs fully

Some people give eggshells to their chickens, so I decided to have a go and share my experiences via my blog.

It takes a bit of planning. I normally throw the eggshells into the kitchen compost bin, so I had to train myself out of that.

Each time I use an egg, instead of throwing it away, I drop it in the sink. I then wash the inside out thoroughly. If you leave too much of the membrane inside, it can be difficult to crush the shell - it sort of sticks together. 

Crush the eggshells

It is important to dry the eggs before attempting to crush them. Some people bake them in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes. I simply leave them out for a couple of days before putting them into a plastic freezer bag.

Crushed eggshells

Once I have enough eggshells in the plastic bag, I crush them using a rolling pin. This can take a little while, but it is worth it. I then put the crushed shells into a washed out jam jar and add them to my hens' food every couple of weeks.

My hens eat layers pellets with added vermix alternating with omega mash which they love. Sometimes I mix the mash with the pellets. They don't seem to notice or care if there is eggshell added or not. However I do notice the eggs have good strong shells. I haven't had a softie or delicate shelled egg since I've been doing this, but without having a control group of chickens that I do not feed eggshells to, I can't be absolutely sure that the extra calcium is causing this.

I recently read an interesting blog post from The Prairie Homestead on how to feed eggshells to your chickens which suggested feeding the eggshells to your hens in a separate container from their usual food so that the chickens could choose if they needed extra calcium or not. I may try this. I don't want to overfeed them with calcium.

Update 21 Dec. 16 - I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but using a blender speeds up the crushing. It does generate a lot of dust, but it saves all that rolling pin work :) Also, since giving the eggshells in a separate container, I find my hens gobble them down, so they are clearly keen on the extra calcium.

Red Mites!

Found, to my horror, that I had red mite in my pink Omlet cube housing four hens. I had cube and a separate pink eglu with separate run and 3 bantams. I dusted hens in diatomaceous earth, moved them to a clean red eglu that I also treated with poultry shield (PS) & diatom earth. This eglu is at the other end of the garden.

 I also checked the pink eglu and it appeared clear but I cleaned it with PS and dusted with diatom earth. I dismantled the cube & sprayed with PS that appeared to kill the mites. By this time they were everywhere and I was creeped out so I went inside, changed, washed my clothes and showered.

3 days later I checked both eglus. There were about 10 dead mites in the diatomaceous earth in the poop tray of the pink eglu. I suspect I may have introduced them myself when I was dealing with the cube. The red eglu appeared clear. I cleaned and retreated both eglus with PS and diatomaceous earth. I jet washed the cube and left to dry.

Next day I sprayed with poultry shield. Each time I checked, I would find a few more mites that I would kill. Meanwhile my bin was teeming with mites from the bedding I'd disposed of! Yeuch.

So I covered it with poultry shield which seemed to do the trick.  I am reassembling the cube bit by bit, spraying for mites as I go. I don't plan to put the hens back until November, but I would like it to be clear. I plan to use red mite concentrate on my birds, but have been using diatomaceous earth only so far. The four hens now in the red eglu are looking much better, nice red combs etc. However I'm sure that some of the mites will have moved across with them.

As I sit here in the garden, I have the odd mite (grey) wander across my iPad or arm. I checked the deckchair and there were two under the canvas fabric. Has my jet washing spread the mites across my lawn? Is it normal to have some level of mites in the environment and can I keep on top of them by cleaning my hens assiduously every 3 days?  I've read conflicting discussions. Can red mites live on me or on my cat? I've been washing my mite infested clothes, but can they survive water? Can they only lay eggs after a feed, and could they get a feed from me or my cat? When I catch them on my iPad, they are grey not red. Have I triggered some form of technologically adept red mite? Are they using my Twitter account to tweet their followers? :)))

I've had chickens for 10 years without red mite. This is such a shock. Yeuchy Yeuchy  Yuck Yuck

 I've been using a pink eglu cube for the past year and I wonder if it needs a more thorough cleaning regime. I've ordered every red mite product under the sun and read all manner of advice. The most helpful seems to be  http://poultrykeeper.com for advice. In particular this pageon  how to kill red mites and this blog post on how-to-get-rid-of-red-mites which described step by step how to clean and this page which lists the top 8 products, many of which I now have.

watch this space