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Calcium
It is impossible to discuss birds without discussing Calcium. In fact, I'm separating
Calcium out from the rest of the Vitamins & Minerals because it's THAT IMPORTANT to the health of your hens. There
are two basic forms of Calcium - Calcium Carbonate and Calcium Gluconate, though some sources of Calcium Carbonate also contain
Calcium Phosphate.
Calcium Carbonate (Solid Calcium): Most solid forms
of Calcium are Calcium Carbonate. These include:
- Egg Shells
- Cuttle Bones (not a bone and from cuttle fish - also has calcium phosphate)
- Coral Calcium (which is just glorfied limestone)
- Oyster Shell
- Plaster of Paris (Calcium Sulfate hemihydrate)
| Different Sources of Calcium |
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| Clockwise from left - Cuttlebone, CalciBoost, Durvet Calcium Gluconate, Oyster Shell and Egg Shell. |
While Calcium Carbonate is an excellent source of Calcium for your birds, particularly your
laying hens, the problem with it comes into play when you have an eggbound hen. It is physiologically IMPOSSIBLE for
a hen, even if she ate exclusively pure Calcium Carbonate all day long, to absorb enough Calcium into her body to prevent
her from becoming egg bound the next day - assuming she successfully lays the egg she was bound with and then decides to lay
another the following day.
Therefore, sources of Calcium Carbonate are to best used on a daily basis. Assuming
you are feeding enough Calcium both in egg food and by also have side cups full of it, then a hen should not become egg bound.
But hens don't always eat what they should any more than people do, or she may have some sort of gastrointestinal disorder
which is inhibiting her Calcium uptake.
Enter the calvary!
Calcium Gluconate (Liquid Calcium): This is THE MOST
SOLUBLE form of readily available and reasonably priced Calcium you can get for your birds. Calcium gluconate is really just
calcium attached to a sugar moiety - so it is rapidly absorbed by the intestines, and the bird is able to use it where it
is needed most. This is critical for an egg bound hen.
WHICH CALCIUM GLUCONATE?: I keep two types of Calcium
Gluconate on hand. One is cheap but only has Calcium Gluconate in it. The other is infintely more expensive (for
reasons that elude me), but it also has vitamin D3 and Magnesium, two critical co-factors required for Calcium uptake.
Neither have the amino acid lysine which is also required for calcium uptake.
If you're an expert on Calcium and egg binding, you can skip my Egg Binding Monologue.
Otherwise, be sure to read it and take my warning to heart.
Egg Binding:
I must digress to explain egg binding at this point... Typically when a hen is bound, it is
because she has used up all her Calcium reserves. Birds have hollow bones, so they do not have the Calcium reserves
of mammals. She has depleted her Calcium because either you (the keeper) have not provided her with enough or any Calcium,
or she is not eating her Calcium like she should. An eggbound hen is in critical condition. If the egg does not
pass, it will start to press on her kidney and nerves - this can result in a slow painful death. If the stuck egg
is down low enough in her cloacal area, she will not be able to void excrement (fecal matter and urates), and these
too will start to back up further poisoning her system.
Egg binding as the result of hypocalcemia (too little calcium) usually means that there is
a shell on the egg. If there were no shell, odds are the hen could pass the egg without so much effort - but not necessarily.
In order to move the egg out of her body, she needs to contract muscles in her cloaca. Early on in egg binding,
a hen can usually be seen straining to push the egg out. As she exhausts herself and the egg goes nowhere (stuck in
the lower cloaca) her waste materials back up. At this point, she will stop pushing and start preparing to die. Muscles
too need Calcium to work. Without Calcium, muscles do not contract properly, and a stuck egg will not move forward and
out the cloaca.
Signs of an Egg Bound Hen: An egg bound hen can be
seen from a mile away. She is fluffed, lethargic, tail bobbing, not eating, perhaps sleeping and if severe, on
the bottom of the flight or cage over in the corner struggling to breathe. There is only one way to save an egg bound
hen - that is by using CALCIUM GLUCONATE!!! Immediately.
NOT HAVING CALCIUM GLUCONATE ON HAND IS THE NUMBER ONE MISTAKE MADE BY MANY NEW AND EVEN EXPERIENCED
BREEDERS. DON'T BE SORRY - BE SURE TO ALWAYS HAVE THIS 'MEDICATION' ON HAND.
How to treat an Egg Bound Hen: The best way to deal
with an egg bound hen is to deliver a few hundred microliters of Calcium Gluconate
via crop needle (or tube) down into her crop. Repeat in another hour or so. Move her to a clean, warm cage where
she has privacy. How warm? 90 F is not too high. Be sure she has water with Calcium Gluconate in it, a good
seed mix and egg food to eat. Usually, left in seclusion, a bound hen will pass her egg in an hour or two - or at worst
- over night. Usually if the egg does not pass in 12 hours, the situation is very serious. She may more than likely
require veterinarian care in order to save her life (the egg will have to be surgically removed.)
After the hen has passed her egg, she should NOT be bred. She should be put into a flight
without breeding supplies and given some time to replenish her Calcium reserves. This is particularly frustrating with
Gouldian hens, as being separated from her mate and nest, she will most assuredly molt and the breeding season is over for
that hen. But better to put an end to breeding, than to have a hen's carcass on your hands. IF the hen has already
laid four or so eggs, odds are she's nearly done with her clutch anyway and you can try leaving her with her mate to see if
she goes back to incubating. Usually they do (and lay perhaps one more egg). While she is incubating, she
has time to build up her Calcium again. This approach works fine so long as she doesn't have an underlying health disorder
that caused the egg binding in the first place (for example protozoal). In which case, she also needs to be treated
for the underlying health problem in addition to hypocalcemia.
You should give her liquid Calcium up to five times a week for the first few weeks after
binding to ensure that she's building her bones back up again.
Back to Calcium
CALCIUM GLUCONATE FOR MILK FEVER: You can purchase
this from most pigeon suppliers or from your local feed shop/grainery. It's a form of 23% Calcium Gluconate that
is manufactured for the dairy industry. It is meant to be injected in milking cows when they have milk fever (mastitis
or low blood calcium aka hypocalcemia).
DOSING: Calcium Gluconate works fine if added to
water in the following concentration:
1 US measuring Tablespoon per gallon of water.
1/4 US measuring Tablespoon per quart of water
Converting to metric:
15 ml per 4 liters of water.
3.75 ml per liter of water.
Most of my waterers hold 1 cup or 250 mls. So I'd need to add about 1/4 teaspoon
or a little less than a ml of Calcium Gluconate to 1 cup or 250 mls in order to have the right dilution. This can be
done with a syringe (sans needles because we are all too irresponsible to have hypodermic needles here in the US). Syringes
can be purchases at any pharmacy - you do NOT need a prescription for syringes. It's the needles that we are not allowed
to have.
So there you have it:
About 1 ml Calcium Gluconate into 250 mls water or 1/4 teaspoon of Calcium Gluconate into
1 cup of water.
CALCIBOOST (or Calcivet): I have used the first, and
I pretty much follow the label instructions. The advantage of CalciBoost & Calcivet is that both have
Magnesium and Vitamin D3. These are critical for the optimal uptake of Calcium in the shortest period of time and
therefore will further aid a critically ill hen.
I keep just enough Calciboost on hand for the very ill hen that I have occasionally.
Otherwise, the plain Calcium Gluconate is more than sufficient, and at $3 for 500 mls vs $12 for 250 mls, it's about
1/10 the price.
Do I need CalciBoost or is Calcium Gluconate Good Enough?
You can wing it with Calcium Gluconate. For most of my egg bound hens, dosing with Calcium
Gluconate alone has been more than sufficient to help her pass her egg in a matter of hours.
However, if you want to add in the other cofactors for better Calcium absorption, this is
what you can do. Vitamin D3 is found in abundance in Cod Liver Oil. Add a few drops of cod liver oil
to the crop tube of Calcium Gluconate before you dispense it. A ready source of magnesium is EPSOM SALTS (Magnesium
Sulfate). It dissolves readily in water. Put a small pinch in her drinking water.
This is what I have done in the past with a very ill hen when I was out of CalciBoost -
take it or leave it. Dissolve some Epsom in a few mls of water. Suck up 100 - 200 microliters into
a crop tube. Suck up another 200 mls or so of Calcium Gluconate. Top it off with a few drops of Cod Liver Oil.
All together, it should equal less than 500 ul (or half a ml) which is a reasonable volume to dispense in any mature bird's
crop. Voila - insta Calciboost made from stuff I have on hand.
Honestly, 99% of the time, I do not even bother to do this - I just crop dose directly with
Calcium Gluconate.
But I don't know how to Crop Dose?!?
So, you don't know how to crop dose. First off, let me say that if you are keeping finches
seriously, this is one technique that you should teach yourself. It's a bit nerve wracking the first few times you do
it, but knowing how to do this can save a birds life. So it's worth learning. I taught myself by practicing on
Zebras.
The alternative to crop dosing is to give Calcium Gluconate to the beak. You will need
to get at least get a few drops of Calcium Gluconate into her beak. I don't like this method because she will fling
most of it back out again, and I feel like I never know if she got the Calcium or not, hence the crop needling. But
if you don't know how or are uncomfortable with using a crop tube, this is the next best thing.
Many times, YOU CANNOT JUST PUT CALCIUM GLUCOATE IN THE WATER AND THINK IT WILL HAVE ANY BENEFIT.
A very sick egg bound hen may have completely stopped drinking. Therefore, you essentially have to force feed her Calcium
Gluconate to be sure she's received what she needs to save her life.
If you are uncomfortable using Calcium Gluconate alone or my concoction above, then get the
Calciboost or whatever trade name it is sold under in your neck of the woods. Whatever you get, GET IT BEFORE you have
a bound hen and are in a panic.
Personally, I just hate making people rich when there are more cost effective alternatives
available that work equally well. The moment something is manufactured for the EXOTIC bird industry, the cost is
at least an order or magnitude higher. I paid those prices for YEARS until I got wise to it. It's your money and
your birds, so you need to decide for yourself.
Maintenance Dose of Liquid Calcium
You may use liquid calcium up to five times per week, particularly when you have a laying
hen. IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED TO USE DAILY. Hypercalcemia (too much blood calcium) has it's own health problems too.
Like all things in life - everything in moderation, nothing in excess.
Since I've switched to using the chick starter which is Calcium enhanced and then leave
the egg shells on for egg food, I only have an egg bound hen very rarely these days. I treat her as described above
with crop dosing Calcium Gluconate and heat. Then for the next week or two, I will add liquid calcium to her drinking
water so that she can replenish her depleted Calcium reservoirs. Some hens do tend towards egg binding. Gastrointestinal
problems such as trichomonas and tape worm can also predispose a hen to egg binding.
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