Alternative Chicken Feeds

Yes, if you are raising chickens, then poultry supplies shops will have a variety of feeds that you can easily purchase yet they can heighten your budget for raising chickens as well as having to deal with the lack of calcium in your chickens’ diet. 

There is actually an alternative solution for this, you can feed your chickens crushed eggs shells.  You wouldn’t think that this is possible but indeed it is, chickens generally eat anything and they will surely eat the crushed shells, you can supplement your chickens’ diet with calcium, solving the problem of weak shelled eggs that break easily while saving up a few bucks.

You will need to make sure that you egg shells are clean by rinsing them thoroughly, ensure that any leftover egg is removed and cleaned off from the egg shells.  Once you have rinsed them, put them in a drying dish and let dry for a few hours.  When they are totally dry, you can crush them into bite size pieces, perhaps the size of your grain feed and mix them with the grain you feed your chickens.  The crushed shells will provide your chicken with the necessary calcium they need to provide you with strong shells.  You can easily ‘recycle’ the shells if you eat the eggs your chickens lay, then use that to re-feed them. 

A lot of people are worried that feeding egg shells to their chickens will cause the chickens to start eating their eggs, but this is not the case, if your chickens are provided with enough food and nutrition, they will not become egg eaters.  Actually, this can help solve that particular problem since chickens who lack calcium are the ones who become egg eaters as they will find a source for whatever nutrient they lack. 

 

You should also take into consideration that chickens are naturally protective of their eggs. They will generally try to protect the eggs as much as they can and they will tend to eat damaged or cracked eggs to protect the other eggs from various predators as damaged eggs are more easily detected by predators, perhaps they can smell the egg yolk or sac when the egg is cracked, resulting in the loss of all eggs. It may be a good practice to pick your eggs regularly so you can easily remove any weak eggs in the process and protect not only your eggs but your chicken from predators as well. 

In the end, raising chickens need not be expensive nor hard, all you need is a little ingenuity to get you a long way.  Make sure you pick a good poultry shop to get all your poultry needs once you decide to raise your own chickens. Check out http://www.poultrysupplies.org for the best poultry supplies in your area.