Can you get a cuttlebone, grind it up, and will that be a good enough source of calcium for them?
Calcium for egg layers
you can but it would be cheaper to get a bag of the oyster shells.and then you can mix it in the food..its not ground real fine, they like to pick it out..i just throw some on the ground and they scratch it along with everything else..
cindy
It might be--but there are different forms of calcium, with different absorption rates--When you give Budgies cuttle bone you are not really expecting them to start intensive egg production. Layer mash/pellets usually has calcium and I tend to supplement that with ground up egg shells.
It is an interesting question. You might need a huge amount of cuttle bone to provide enough--how cheap is it?
We've always been afraid to give our chickens eggshells. Maybe ground up would work; how do you grind them? And it's not as though they haven't figured out for themselves that henfruit is delicious, but we always figured why actually hawk it to them?
I just bash them up fine--after I put it them in a low oven to dry out. You're right, you don't want it to be recognizable as an egg.
I leave egg shells in a bowl for a few days to dry.. then use a heavy glass to mash them to nearly powder. Or you can put them in a heavy plastic bag and smash them in the bag...
Oyster shell is cheap from the feed store here.. but mine prefer egg shells.
A coffee grinder also works very well to pulverize eggshells.