I am new to chicken keeping, so about 80% of my information comes from books, haha! I have been steering clear of the oyster shell for my tiny free-range flock because I've heard that it can be really high in mercury (since it's from the ocean and oysters can bioaccumulate toxins in substrates). What's your take on that?
At the moment, I'm feeding my chickens back their egg shells (crushed up, so that they can't recognize them). I also find that my layers eat a fair amount of critters while they forage (lizards, mice, and the like). Do you think they hunt them down for the calcium in their bones?
So excited to have other people who are sharing this life to bounce ideas off of! All my old city friends have never kept a chicken, so we've become more a conversational oddity than a legitimate discussion on how to take care of them.
From my reading yesterday, they say eggshells are not enough calcium. If you're worried about the mercury, then I would try and find the limestone.
I believe they hunt critters for their tasty meat. Hehe probably not much else going thru their head.
Not sure really about the mercury, and hadn't heard of that being a big problem. Where'd you read that? Not sure the mercury would transfer to the shells as much as much as the oyster itself.