What to Do If Your Chicken Eggs Are Deficient
If you plan to raise chickens from a commercial point of view, you need to ensure that their eggs are of sufficiently high quality to satisfy your end consumer. This can be easier said than done if you do not know how to rear chickens properly and, crucially, give them the right amount of calcium in their diet. Why is this important, and how can you make sure that you get it right?
Market Suitability
Consumers can be very picky and will refuse a carton of eggs if the shells simply do not look right. The shell itself needs to be of a certain consistency and colour, and, of course, it needs to be reasonably strong.
As a producer, you won't be able to send your products to the market at all if the shells are very deficient. They may be more like a film than a shell in the worst-case scenario, or they could simply fall apart when you try to pick up the egg.
In this situation, you will need to modify your chickens' diet so that each egg is perfectly formed and ready for market. You will need to give your flock a boost by adding some specific dietary supplements to help them with their calcium requirement.
Using Shell Grit
The chicken cannot produce a perfectly formed egg if it does not have enough calcium carbonate. This is typically stored in the body, and you need to ensure that the levels are sufficiently high. To do this, add calcium shell grit to their diet, as it is very rich in vitamin C and minerals.
If your chickens are free range, you can sprinkle the grit around their habitat. The chickens will naturally gravitate to the product, especially if they are deficient in the first place.
Buying Your Product
Some people simply crush up the shells of any rejected eggs, but this may not be enough. Those eggs are, after all, deficient in one way or another and the leftover shell may be of poor quality.
Instead, your best approach is to buy your calcium shell grit from a recognised supplier, so you know what you're getting and can be sure that it'll work. Talk with your supplier to choose the right product, as this will be based on the average size of each bird. The digestive system works differently in each case, and you will want to ensure that you can achieve the best result.
On this site, we love the land and we believe there is no better way of showing our appreciation than writing about good farming practices. While we aren't agricultural experts in any sense of the word, we do have a very strong passion for everything to do with farming. We have dedicated hours of research into the latest farming practices and have used our knowledge to produce articles about crop rotation, soil analysis, and high-tech farming machinery. It is our hope that the info here will help to give you a headstart if you are thinking about getting involved in the agricultural sector.