Even if your chickens are eating an ideal, balanced diet that provides them with all the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients they need to be healthy and happy birds, there are two supplementary foods that you should consider feeding your chickens:
- Oyster Shells
- Grit
Many beginning chicken raisers confuse these two supplements, or think they are for the same purpose. This article will explain the difference between grit and oyster shells and also explain why you need both.
Oyster Shells
Oyster shells are exactly what they sound like: crushed oyster shells. Crushed oyster shells provide an extra boost of calcium that will allow your chickens to lay nice, hard-shelled eggs. To give your chickens oyster shells, just offer in a bowl or cage cup in a separate container next to your chickens’ feed. Usually, the chickens that need the oyster shells’ calcium in their diet will eat the oyster shells and the chickens that don’t need the vitamin boost won’t eat the shells. Never feed oyster shells to chickens that are not yet laying eggs.
Crushed oyster shells are available at feed stores and also at chicken websites like My Pet Chicken. The oyster shells at My Pet Chicken’s website, for example, are available in a five-pound bag and contain heat-treated oyster shells with a minimum of 33% calcium.
Grit
Have you heard the myth that chickens don’t have teeth? They don’t! Instead of chewing, chickens store grit, or small stones in their “crop,” an area of the digestive system where chickens begin to digest their food before it enters the stomach.
If your chickens are not free ranging in areas where there are small pebbles, rocks, and stones, you should probably provide them with some grit. Unlike oyster shells, it’s likely that if one of your chickens needs grit the rest of them also need it, so you can either sprinkle the grit directly into the feed or offer it to your chickens in a separate container. Either way, if they need it, they’ll eat it.
Like oyster shells, grit is available at most feed stores and online chicken websites. The grit at My Pet Chicken, again, comes in five-pound bags and contains 100% crushed granite.
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My chickens have access to sand. Will that work or do they need small pebbles? Also, we live in Charleston, SC, so we have oyster roasts over the winter months. I just save the oyster shells, clean them, and crush them as needed. My girls love them!