25/09/2021
SO MANY TIMES I READ OR HEAR,, "FEED YOUR CHOOKS MORE SHELL GRIT"
Shell grit, oysters shell are both used for exactly the same thing to grind food in their crop.
If you put 6 or 7mm blue metal (what our roads surfaces are made with) in their areas they would pick them up and eat them as a grinding mechanism.
They do not see a piece of oyster shell or shell grid and think to themselves "you beaut" calcium for my calcium depleted body from laying these humans so many eggs.
Food manufacturers that make chook food for the egg industry have been making specific food for our hens for longer than most of us have been alive and the good manufacturers have it down to a fine art, if you are feeding your chickens a good quality layer pellet it has all the calcium in it that your bird needs, and it is a very balanced diet and can only be accentuated buy us free ranging them for a green pick and bugs, worms.
Once a hens especially a commercial layer type gets to a certain amout of eggs layed the poor girls body is depleted in calcium because of previous production.
The people who have shell grit in the pen in say an old pan for the chook to eat at will, would be doing the chook an injustice if they also did not have a good quality layer pellet in the pen for the birds to eat before they go to the shell grit.
As I'm sure most chook keepers are aware a chook p**ps while on the perch (lots), and because of this from the moment they get of the perch in the morning they look for food to refill the crop. This all happens while most of us sleep, or when we're thinking of bashing the alarm clock.
If you do not have good food on hand for them to eat before sunrise then as they are hungry they will start to forage, if there is only a tray of shell grit then this may be one of the things they pick up to fill their crop, then it gets p**ped out and your chook is suffering from malnutrition.
Yes the shell grit, oysters shell will help if you are only feeding them wheat, but truly a balanced diet is the only way to go.
You don't feed a gym ju**ie steak, chips and icecream.
And a chook is working a lot harder than them. Foraging, keeping warm or cool, ova (yolk) and ovulation process every day it lays, then she selflessly wraps it in a shell so she can be a good pet and p**p us breakfast.
Feed them well, often and consistent food type.
We use a Lauke product that has similar spec as this.
