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What do you do with chickens that have finished laying..

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BarriedaleNick:
So we have one chicken that is now about 3.5 years old and has recently really slowed down plus we have an odd little bird that is only a year old but has never really got back to laying after the winter.  Added to that is that her shells are really thing despite our best feeding efforts - the consequence is that they break and now the birds seem in the habit of eating their own eggs! 

We don't have room to add more birds so logic dictates that the two have to go..  I don't consider them pets but they are still a little more than kept animals and I am a bit of a softy really..

What do you people do and if you do dispatch them - how do you do it?

Cheers

Paulines7:
I don't get rid of mine, Nick, hence my oldest bird is about 10 years old.  I have noticed she cannot see very well these days but she gets by.  I have been digging out nettles in their run and that's when I was aware that she couldn't always see the worms I threw her. 

I have three cockerels and six hens.  I couldn't put the males down just because they don't lay eggs but I have got rid of some of them in the past by taking them to market.  The problem is that they have to go in pairs and I am always afraid that someone will buy them and use them for fighting.   I have plenty of land for my birds and although they chase each other, they don't fight.   

My OH has had to despatch birds in the past when they have become ill and hates doing it. One hen had a tumour which came up in on its head and three chickens which I bought as chicks from the market, developed Marek's disease over a period of time.   I bought chicks from a nearby farm about three years ago and bred some of my own when I had a broody chicken.  They have all been healthy but, unfortunately, I have ended up with a lot of cockerels.   

I have a couple of suggestions about your two hens.  It's possible that the young one could go broody this year and this may get her out of the habit of eating her own eggs.  I assume you are giving your hens plenty of grit in the form of oyster shell which will give them more calcium?   Do the hens have plenty of room to run around?  Can their run be extended to give them something new? 

The older bird may just be having a rest from egg laying.  Do you only have these two chickens?  If you have others, are they eating eggs too?  You may end up filling an egg with mustard to get them out of the habit of eating their eggs.  See: http://www.betterhensandgardens.com/egg-eating-chickens/

BarriedaleNick:
We just have the two and I had just read about the mustard thing!  Might have to give that a go... 
They have a enough space and we let them roam the garden when we are around (although they make a right old mess) - we have tried adding oyster shells and varying the diet with lots of greens but one consistently lays very fragile eggs which seems to have lead to them finding that they can eat their own...

I guess there are more things to try yet and I don't want to dispatch them anyway - but they aren't really pets so they do need to give us enough eggs..

Malcolm Brown:
You probably won't like this but I will tell you.  When I first started City and Guilds Agriculture courses in 1981 very early in the course we were each given a chicken and a broom and told to kill the chicken.  It wasn't too much of a problem for me because when I was a lad in the late 40s and 50s my Grandad had a few hundred chickens for eggs and meat, my Dad kept meat rabbits and there were a number of neighbours with pigs in their back gardens or allotments.  It was a bit of a culture shock for some students though.

Paulines7:
Is the main food you feed them layers pellets or mixed corn, Nick?  If the latter, try changing to the pellets.  There is a lot on the internet about calcium and vitamin deficiency.  I read that feeding hens cod liver oil on a pice of bread can help them.  I also read that they shouldn't have spinach as it can interfere with calcium absorption!

Once you have sorted out the calcium deficiency, is there any way that you can alter the nest box so the eggs roll out of reach after being laid? 

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