BN-06 · In research. Waitlist open.

Bird N3rdz

Name: Bird N3rdz Poultry Powder
Brand: Bird N3rdz

Poultry Powder

Your hen builds her shell in the dark, hours after she last ate. One eggshell consumes roughly 52% of a hen's daily calcium intake, and most of it is deposited overnight while the crop is empty. That figure is calculated from assumed egg, shell and feed values, not measured on farm, and should be read that way. A calcium supplement that has already dissolved by lights out is not there when the work happens. This one is built in two particle fractions so that some of it is.

Join the waitlist See the timing problem

A feed amendment, not a block. Galliformes forage and peck rather than gnaw a mounted article, so the mineral goes to the feed.

Concept diagram, not a photograph. The coarse fraction is retained and works through the dark hours. The fine fraction is available immediately. One product, two release windows.

The timing problem

The hen eats by day and builds her shell at night.

Shell calcification runs for most of a day, and the heaviest deposition falls in the dark hours when the bird is not eating. So the question is not only how much calcium is in the feed. It is whether any of it is still available at two in the morning.

dark hours, no feed intake

Feed intake
concentrated in daylight

Heaviest shell deposition
while the crop is empty

fine fraction, available and gone coarse fraction, still releasing

Schematic. Timings are typical for a laying flock and vary with lighting program, breed and season.

01 / The gizzard

Coarse particles are retained

Fine calcium passes through quickly. Coarse particles are held in the gizzard and dissolve slowly, which is precisely why the practice of feeding coarse limestone or oyster shell to layers exists at all. It is a physical mechanism, not a nutritional one.

02 / The reserve

Medullary bone pays the difference

When dietary calcium runs short during the dark hours, the hen draws on medullary bone, a labile reserve laid down for exactly this purpose. It works, and it is not free. Sustained reliance on the reserve is how skeletal condition degrades across a laying cycle.

03 / The consequence

Timing shows up in the shell

A ration can meet its calcium specification on paper and still leave the hen short at the hour she needs it. That is a distribution problem rather than a quantity problem, and adding more of a fast dissolving powder does not fix it.

Two fractions

The lever is a narrow cut at the right point.

Dissolution time scales with particle radius, and across the standard commercial screen grades that is a span of nearly two orders of magnitude. That span is usually described as an advantage. It is not. A single grade covering it spends most of its mass on the wrong clock. What matters is picking a narrow cut whose dissolution life matches the window it has to serve, and then blending only two of them.

Grade	Screen	Particle range	Relative dissolution time	Released in the overnight window
Flour	32 x 200 mesh	74 to 500 um	1x to 7x	-
Meal, granular	20 x 100 mesh	149 to 841 um	2x to 11x	-
Standard poultry coarse	1/4 x 20 mesh	841 to 6350 um	11x to 86x	22%
Our product cut	20 x 14 mesh	841 to 1400 um	narrow cut	54%

Choose a particle whose dissolution life approximates the far edge of the demand window. At 841 um that life is 11.4 hours against a window closing at 11 hours, which is why the optimum sits there and not coarser.

Our provisional blend is 70% coarse to 30% fine, printed rather than described, and open on the register until measured overnight release closes it. Calcium supplements for layers are sold on concentration. None we surveyed states a particle size distribution, which is the variable that actually determines whether the calcium is present at the hour of demand. A stated distribution is a specification a customer can hold us to. A bag labeled simply as calcium carbonate is not.

The ratio

Still formulated for tolerance, just no longer the headline.

Across the rest of our line the calcium to phosphorus ratio is the whole story. Here it matters and it is engineered, but it comes second, because a laying hen's binding constraint is when the calcium arrives rather than what it arrives beside. We would rather rank our own arguments honestly than lead with the one that markets best.

What carries across

The same tolerance formulated backbone

Grain based rations run phosphorus rich and calcium poor, so a stated and deliberate ratio is worth having here as it is anywhere else. The phosphorus source is measured rather than incidental, and the finished ratio is printed on the bag.

What is different

Delivery follows husbandry

Parrots gnaw, so their product mounts on a stick. Pigeons peck, so theirs is a free standing stone. Galliformes forage across a floor and eat from a feeder, so theirs is a powder that goes into the ration. Same chemistry, three formats, chosen by how the animal actually feeds.

What is not in it

Three things we left out on purpose.

Because a feed amendment is the wrong vehicle for them

Vitamin D3. Minerals catalyze the breakdown of fat soluble vitamins, and published stability data on conventional complete premixes shows retention below twenty percent after three months. A D3 figure printed on a mineral product is largely gone before the bird eats it. Birds with access to unfiltered daylight also make their own through a reaction that shuts itself off and cannot overdose them.

Medication of any kind. This is a mineral amendment. Anything intended to treat a condition is a veterinary decision and a different regulatory category, and mixing the two into one bag serves nobody.

Filler to hit a price. Bulking a mineral product with inert material is easy, invisible on a label that states only calcium, and detectable in an assay. We publish the assay.

A mineral amendment is one input among many. It does not replace a balanced ration, and it is not a substitute for veterinary advice about your flock. Not for growing ratites, whose calcium requirement is lower and stage specific. This line is built for backyard and small flock keepers.

Development status

We publish the open questions too.

This is a research program, not a finished shelf product. Items stay flagged as open until a certificate of analysis or bench data closes them, and nothing goes on sale while a safety item is still open.

ClosedParticle size to dissolution time relationship verified against commercial screen grades. Absolute figures still scale with the reference dissolution life under gizzard conditions.

ClosedComposition of a candidate carbonate source cross checked four ways against calcium, calcium oxide and carbonate figures.

OpenCoarse to fine blend ratio. Provisional working figure is 70% coarse, 30% fine, to be set against measured overnight release rather than left as inference alone.

OpenCarbonate source identification, since biogenic sources run 6.6 to 7.6 m2/g against 4.3 for mined limestone, which would change the dissolution reference itself.

OpenHeavy metal screening for lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury on every mineral input. Hard quality gate.

OpenInclusion rate per bird per day across flock sizes, with a dosing method that does not require weighing.

OpenSuitability for non laying birds, since a layer ration and a grower ration are not the same problem.

OpenReference dissolution life of a carbonate particle under gizzard conditions. This is the dominant unknown in our particle sizing and every absolute figure scales with it.

OpenWhether a 20 x 14 mesh cut is commercially available or requires custom screening.

OpenFeed registration and label format review before any unit is offered for sale.

Get the first run

Backyard flocks and small producers first.

Join the list and you get told when the first run opens, what the analysis showed, and what was still open on the register the day it shipped.

Bird N3rdz beta program

We can only keep so many birds at home and in the lab, and one flock only generates so much data. The beta program extends the testing to your flock.

Selected testers receive products free of charge to trial, a discount code, and coverage of their birds alongside ours across the Bird N3rdz channels.

Registering sends you one email covering the testing rules, the format we need feedback in, and a few questions about your birds.

Your details are used for beta testing and feedback only. We do not sell them and we do not share them.

Part of a platform

One correction, many species

The same calcium system runs through companion parrot blocks, a loft pickstone for racing pigeons, a two fraction poultry amendment for small flocks, a reptile dusting powder and an aqua remineralizer. Built for small keepers, not large commercial herds. The species change, the husbandry changes, the delivery format changes, and the underlying defect does not.

See the parrot line See the pigeon line