Essentially EMMETT

13/02/2026

09/02/2026

She Isn’t Hunting Spiders. She’s Eating Your House. 🧱🐦
You hear a persistent tap-tap-tapping on your exterior wall. You spot a small, bright Blue Tit pecking away at the mortar between your bricks. Your first thought: “She’s just looking for insects.”

You’re wrong.

She is engaging in Lithophagy—the consumption of stone. This bird is literally mining your home for minerals because the natural world around her has run out.

The Science of the “Wall-Eater”
1. The Calcium Crisis (The Biology of Egg-Laying) 🧮
A female Blue Tit is on the verge of laying a clutch of 10–12 eggs.

Each eggshell is composed almost entirely of Calcium Carbonate (CaCO₃).

Producing a single shell requires roughly 100mg of calcium.

Her natural diet of seeds and caterpillars provides less than 5mg of calcium per day.

She is operating at a 95% deficit. If she cannot close this gap, she physically cannot lay her eggs.

2. The “Mortar Mine” (A Question of Availability) ⛏️
In a healthy forest ecosystem, she would consume hundreds of tiny snail shells for their calcium.

But in a typical, tidy UK garden in late winter/early spring, snails are hibernating, scarce, or have been eliminated by pesticides.

So, she turns to the next-best available source: the mortar in your walls.

Older UK homes often use lime-based mortar, which is rich in calcium and soft enough to crumble.

She isn’t sharpening her beak. She is swallowing mineral particles, which will dissolve in her acidic stomach (proventriculus) and be repurposed to form her eggshells.

3. The Dual Purpose: Grit as a Tool 🪨
This behavior serves a second, critical function. Birds lack teeth.

To grind food in their muscular gizzard, they swallow small stones called Gastroliths.

Pecking at the wall provides both the chemical calcium for reproduction and the mechanical grit necessary for digestion.

Without this, she risks hypocalcemia (leading to soft, unviable eggs) and inefficient digestion.

The Verdict
If a bird is eating your wall, she is acting out of desperation. Do not chase her away. Instead, provide her with a better, more convenient source.

Offer a “Birdie Mineral Buffet”:
Baked, Crushed Eggshells: Sterilize by baking, then crush into small pieces.

Oyster Shell Grit: Widely sold for poultry.

Cuttlefish Bone: Scrape it into a powder or offer small chunks.

Place a small pile in a bird feeder or on a table. She will almost immediately abandon your mortar once she discovers this pure, easy source.

Quick FAQ
Q: Will this actually damage my house?
A: Structural damage is highly unlikely. She is collecting mere grams of surface material. Unless your mortar is already severely degraded and sandy, her activity won’t cause failure. She’s essentially just scavenging loose particles.

Q: Why is she pecking at my window putty?
A: It’s the recipe. Traditional linseed oil putty contains chalk (calcium) and linseed oil (fat). To a nutrient-starved bird, this combination is like a “Calcium Energy Bar.” Modern silicone-based putties don’t offer the same appeal and are generally ignored.

Q: Can I use grit sold for pet birds?
A: Yes, but check the type carefully. There are two kinds:

Insoluble Grit: Like flint or granite. Used only for grinding food in the gizzard.

Soluble Grit: Like oyster shell, limestone, or cuttlebone. This provides essential calcium.
For a laying female, soluble grit is what she critically needs.

27/01/2026

Medical Detection Dogs are truly remarkable ❤️

18/01/2026

Hi All!

To streamline Allium Healing this year I have decided to make some changes to how I run things.

Firstly the website is going, it doesn't always behave and isn't very user friendly from smart phones - a major issue nowadays for anyone filling in the questionnaire.

Secondly because the website is going my katy@alliumhealing.co.uk email will also be going. BUT as most of you know I can be contacted in several ways anyway.

So from now on can you all start emailing me to my other email - alliumhealing@hotmail.com
This one tends to be reliable, never land in spam and isn’t racist towards certain email providers 😂😂😂 so it has its benefits!

Or Whatsapp me (which most of you do anyway!!) using the link above on the page. I'm also on Telegram and can be texted too! So if you don’t get a reply in 48 hrs please feel free to nag me till you do.

Please make sure your friends and family all know this too, I will contact people from my hotmail email from now on so you just need to reply from that. I just don't want to miss any emails from you all needing help but there will be a switchover period before the old email disappears!!

I will still be taking on new clients as usual, nothing else changes, so please continue to contact me. I will be providing email/whatsapp questionnaires for new clients, making it simpler to fill in off a phone. Cutting some of the faff from the questionnaire and making it generally easier for you all (and me!). 7 years in and time to make some changes!!

Please share to get the word out!! I’ll be revamping the page in time, new bottles, new logo. Plus I will try and write some useful content soon that you all might enjoy. I know how many of you love my voice note rambles on various subjects 😂😂

Cute goat photo for tax ❤️

06/01/2026

*** TOP WORMING TIP!! ***

As hard frosts hit the UK, those that need worming for encysted redworm will be done in the next week or two, so I thought it was a good time to share one of my top nuggets of worming (de-worming if we want to be correct, but as a “horsey” girl, I’ve always incorrectly said worming!).

Always worm your horse IN THE MORNING! Some horses with high worm burdens/unknown worming histories may colic as the worms start to die off. Some horses may react to a wormer. Some may not eat or drink for hours after being wormed. You need daylight and you need to be able to check your horse, if only at lunchtime and then again in the evening.

As an added tip to potentially avoid an out of hours vet bill, always worm on a week day!

I never advise worming in the evening unless you have cctv and can check your horse several hours later. It just makes sense to worm early morning so that people will always be around for the 12 hours or so after administering a wormer.

My worming posts always attract lots of questions, but this one is only about the ideal time of day to worm, so on this occasion I won’t be answering any questions - I’m having an easy Sunday 😉

For bonus marks, what type of worm is in this poo?

Feel free to share the post, but not to copy and paste as your own.

04/01/2026