The importance of calcium for eggs

Feeding Poultry. — Professor Gregory, of Aberdeen Scotland, in a letter to a friend, observes: —

" As I suppose you keep poultry, I may tell you that it has been ascertained that if you mix with their food a sufficient quantity of eggshells or chalk, which they eat greedily, they will lay twice or thrice as many eggs as before.
" A well-fed fowl is disposed to lay a large number of eggs, but cannot do so without the materials of the shells, however nourishing in other respects her food may be; indeed, a fowl fed on food and water, free from carbonate of lime, and not finding any in the soil, or in the shape of mortar, which they often eat on the walls, would lay no eggs at all with the best will in the world."

January 11 1855, California Farmers.




While I cannot attest to anything about eating the "plaster" on the walls, I can say that I wallpapered my coop with chicken feed bags underneath which is the insulation.  They obviously smelt the insulation and tore at the bag wallpaper to get to it, not finding it to their taste they tore that out.  This year we have been fixing all those holes with a second layer of feed wallpaper, overlapping as much as possible...so far so good.

As for the lime, and the calcium that is true that hens love and need it for the production of their eggs, but surprisingly so do the cockerels and roosters.  Perhaps like Popeye they want to grow strong and have good bones.