Chickens and Soft Shells

Hi Gypsy

First of all I just want to say that I enjoy reading your blog.

I have a question regarding the hardness of chicken shells. Of late, some of the eggs that my chickens are laying we have to throw away as they virtually have no shell to them. They are just soft.

Is this because there is something lacking in their diet or because the chickens have some sort of disease?

Hoping you can help!

Your chickens are just fine. Its a common problem. The best thing to do is feed your egg shells back to the chickens and allow them a few hours before sun down to forage. What they have is a lack of calcium. Oyster shells and sweet lime are 2 common ways to give this to your birds, however, the shells fed back and a bit of forage time will also solve the trouble and for free. If you have a problem getting them kick started do you have shells to feed back, try the oyster shells as that is the biggest boost.
You may want to de-lice also just to kicks. This time of year the wild birds are nesting and bringing in all sorts of critters with them. Some dairy dip under the wings and around the vent area will also solve allot of issues. You can buy horse Ivomec now days for less then 3.00 for 1200lb supply. Just a smidgen of that paste on the tong of your bird will de-worm and de-lice. After you do all that just sit back and wait a week or so for them to catch up.
Let me know how it turns out.
Gypsy

Thanks for answering my question. However, I am a bit confused. You say that feeding the chickens egg shell will help. I am a bit worried doing this because I don't want them to start eating their own eggs. Do I need to do anything special to it before I give it to them or what?

I have heard that.. however I hold no stake in it. I have been feeding egg shells back to chickens for over 30yrs and my grandmother did it for over 80. I have no reason to believe that it would be the cause of egg eating.

Do you just grind it up or do you bake the shells first. A friend has
just told me that if you bake the shells first then you won't have a
problem. Is this what you do?

I have a plastic bucket and when it is full, I take it out to the chickens. When I cook, I just put the egg shells and any Opps.. broken eggs in that bucket along with scraps and feed it as is. No I don't bake them, never heard of that.. I crack the egg.. and toss the birds the shell..

Ok. Got it! Now my last question. How long will I have to wait until I start seeing some improvement?

Since you don't have any eggs to feed back right now I would go buy some oyster shells and feed them for at least a month. In a month you should notice a difference.