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New to chicken keeping!
Mon 2-May-11
9:45 am
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Bluebelle13
Hampton,Middlesex
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Hi am new to chicken keeping but am really enjoying it !!

I have 3 hens and yes they're all named and as if by magic on Friday the day of the Royal Wedding I was presented with 2 eggs! I also get a soft shelled egg everyday,today it is completely egg shaped so am i on the way to a fully formed hard egg?
My chickens have access to grit every day,they run around in the garden and we feed them chicken pellet food too. I also think that only 2 out the 3 hens are laying as one should be laying blue eggs!  

Any advice would be gratefully received smile

Mon 2-May-11
10:28 am
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Hattie
Bucks/Oxon Border

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Hi Sarah & welcome to the forum......it's fun & informative here as well as very friendly.

I suspect that all three of your chickens are laying as it is extremely unusual for a hen to lay 2 eggs a day ( & certainly not daily). I think the soft shelled eggs are laid by the girl who is supposed to lay blue tinted eggs.

Try to buy a bag of crushed oyster shell or feed the shells of your used eggs back to the hens to give them a little more help in the first few weeks.

Good luck with your hens, they are endlessly entertaining to have around.

Nadine/aka Hattie

 

"The beautiful is as useful as the useful...perhaps more so."

from Les Miserables

Mon 30-May-11
7:46 pm
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johnmcc
Norfolk UK

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I have one hen who will lay a soft shelled egg a couple of times a fortnight whatever I feed her.  She has access to oyster shell, grit, she eats layers' pellets as well as a (very) mixed diet.  I just think that occasionally this happens.  The saving grace is that in the same fortnight she will lay 7 or 8 big brown eggs as well.

What's wrong with the politics of envy, anyway?

Mon 30-May-11
11:33 pm
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Terrier
York

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The one I've heard is to roast your used shells (when you next have the cooker on), then grind them up and mixback in with their food.

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