The thought of home grown, free range eggs from your own chooks is hugely appealing, but there are a few ‘trade secrets’ involved to ensure your hens lay the greatest tasting, best looking eggs possible. The single most important ‘trade secret’ to ensuring great tasting, good looking eggs is feed. The nutritional quality of what you feed your hens will directly affect the egg production, egg size, shell quality and overall bird health of your flock.
Protein is essential to a hen’s egg production. Hen eggs contain a large proportion of high quality proteins which hens do not readily produce themselves, but obtain from amino acids ‘the building blocks of protein’ through their various feed sources. it is critical that your chook feed contains amino acids at the appropriate levels and ratios to meet the protein requirements of a laying bird.
Vitamins and minerals also play an important role in producing the best eggs possible. Research has shown that the correct levels of vitamins and minerals help to lower a bird’s stress levels, increase disease resistance and assist in maximising egg production.
Ensuring that your chook feed has the correct balance of supplementary vitamins and minerals results in healthier hens who produce more eggs which are richer in nutrients, particularly the protective vitamins A and E.

 

While home grown eggs always taste ‘better’, there is a key secret involved to ensure they always ‘look’ better as well. The secret is to give your hens ‘green feeds’. Green feeds include the likes of lucerne hay and green vegetables such as silver beet and lettuce leaves. These green feeds are excellent sources of vitamins and pigments which directly result in healthier, better looking eggs that have that real ‘home grown, free range’ appearance.
One of the forgotten nutrients often overlooked when keeping a flock of laying birds is water. Water is vital to hen health as well as egg production. Water must be clean and fresh everyday. If water consumption suffers this will directly affect egg production and in some cases could prove fatal. One way to identify if a hen’s water intake has been affected is to look at her ‘comb’. If a hen has suffered from a restricted water intake, even for a short period of time, her comb will turn a blue-black colour. Water consumption will vary between birds of varying sizes, level of egg production, the season and how the water is supplied. As an indication, a bird 15 weeks of age will consume up to 250mL/day while a bird at 30 weeks of age and older may consume up to 500mL/day.

 

It is also important to supplement your hen’s feed with shell grit. Common types of grit include oyster or mussel shell. Shell grit contains significant levels of calcium essential to a laying bird’s diet to ensure quality egg production. When a hen pecks grit, the grit sits in the bird’s ‘crop’ for a sustained length of time, aiding crop digestion and ‘slowly releasing’ calcium into the bird’s digestive system to aid in the production of good quality shells.
Grit needs to be placed close to the hen’s other feed sources as a hen will self-regulate their own grit intake as they require it.
People often assume that by feeding ‘food scraps’ to hens, this will produce great tasting eggs. This is partly a myth. Vegetable scraps, fruit peels, bread etc will not supply a bird with the necessary nutritional requirements of proteins, vitamins and minerals necessary to maximise egg production, protect bird health or produce great tasting, good looking eggs. Food scraps have their place in bird’s diet but only as supplementary forage fed in conjunction with a specifically formulated poultry feed for laying birds.
One poultry feed that comes highly recommended by many chook breeders and owners is Peck ‘n’ Lay Gold from NRM. Peck ‘n’ Lay Gold is a wholesome ‘complete’ chook feed specifically formulated by leading poultry nutritionists to meet the exacting nutritional needs of laying hens to ensure healthy birds and great tasting, good looking eggs.
Peck ‘n’ Lay Gold provides the necessary proteins and amino acids, is fortified with vitamins and minerals and includes a packet of shell grit in each bag to meet the necessary calcium requirements of your birds.
As a guide, laying hens will consume approximately 130g/bird/day. It is recommended that you provide a self-feeder so that birds can eat ‘ad-lib’ throughout the day. Place grit, food scraps and water close by for easy accessibility.

Owning a flock of laying hens can be hugely rewarding. When your hens lay the greatest tasting and best looking eggs this is even more so. By following these simple guidelines, your hens will be well on their way to producing eggs worthy of a ‘late Sunday morning brunch’ to share with fabulous company in the sunshine!