Calcium-low chickens

Speckled Sussex chicken

Papa went out to gather Opal’s egg today … and it shattered in his hand.  Apparently, she’s not getting enough calcium.  We’re letting her free-range as much as possible and dumping our eggshells in the chicken run, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.  So we now have calcium-enriched feed for them to eat.

Barred rock chicken

Hopefully, that’s the problem with Precious too. She hasn’t laid an egg in quite a while. In fact, she’s been rather lethargic and we were growing concerned about her.

Speckled Sussex chicken

Not that she’s headed for the pot anytime soon. Papa is too taken with her despite the fact that she’s about 90% blind. She’s fully blind in one eye and mostly blind in the other. It makes it hard for her to properly free-range … although apparently, she’s good at avoiding predators since she lived through last spring’s massacres. We’ll probably never know what caused her blindness as a young hen. She’s the sweetest hen we’ve ever had. Friendly enough to handle a toddler petting her.

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