[lisa80]

hi all , whilst waiting for our incy eggs to hatch we got so over excited that we are now taking delivery of 6 14 wk old chickens !!! pics will follow when i work out how to do it.my question is do they need grit as well as their growers pellets? my oh is adamant it has it already in but wanted to check with you all.we have 2  rhode(not sure i spelt that right) island reds 2 cookoo marans and 2 banthams(not sure what type)all pure breeds from a friend of the family.

[chickenlady]

Hello! how very exciting!  yes they do need grit. even though the pellets have calcium in it, it doesnt contain the insoluble grit they use to grind up their food! i use hen grit and i buy oyster shell grit too as they can never have too much when they are laying ALTHOUGH! saying that dont give them the oyster shell till they are at pol or laying as too much calcium whilst they are growing can cause bone problems.

Debbie

[North Devon Dumpling]

Hi

This answers a question I had too after our prolapse event.  We hadn't given ours grit or oyster shell as the layers mash says it has it in, and I was worried about overdosing on calcium (with extra shell), but your post Chicken Lady seems to have answered that for me.  Basically even though the hens are having layers mash they still need extra shell (ours get alot of grit from the drive  but might think about getting them some more too just incase.

[joyfull]

The grit off your drive will help them grind their food up (hens have no teeth or at least they are very rare  ), they need a form of soluble calcium to help with egg shell production. Mine get baked crushed egg shells fed back to them.

[lisa80]

i was thinking about giving them ground up baked egg shell until they are point of lay which will be about 20 wks so im told thanks for advice 

[joyfull]

They can have it whilst they are laying - it's the ultimate in recycling  . POL can be anything up to around 30 ish weeks depending on breed and time of year - some are even later than that. most of mine though have come into lay around 24 weeks.

[hillfooter]

Good quality layers pellets have a balanced diet specially formulated to contain all the nutrition including calcium and insoluable grit they need.  Commercial layers are the Olympic athletes of the laying world and layers feed is formulated exactly for their needs.  Commercial egg producers are exacting in their requirements and want perfect shell and yolk qualities so you can be sure the minerals they need will be in the feed.  When feed is formulated all the base ingredients are analysed and any inbalances and addition minerals required are added under the control of computer programmes so that nutritionally the exact requirements are formualted.

Having said that it generally won't do any harm to make mixed grit available and older chickens may require more calcium than younger birds.  I would disagree with one thing Chickenlady says it is possible to overdose chickens on calcium and the effects on the egg shells can be to cause rough sand papery chalky shells and calcium pips and the effect on the health of the chickens is not good either.  Unbalancing the chickens diet by over feeding scraps corn or giving unnecessary suppliments can be just as bad as having a mineral deficiency,

If your chickens pick up gravel from the drive that's just the same as giving them grit from a feed merchants which is just crushed gravel. Oyster shell is over 90% calciium and they won't want too much of that,  Crushed baked egg shell is around 35% calcium and you have to crush a lot (several hundred) of egg shells to get the equivalent amount of calcium as you'd get in a £1 worth of oyster shell, but if you've nothing better to do ?
See also this thread http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=43698.msg513005#msg513005   particularly CatlinJ's post.

Regards