Feeding hens their own shells... - Page 2

Here's a thought...  Cattle and Horses are for the most part herbivors.  However cattle and horses BOTH eat the placenta after their babies are born.  Most behaviorist believe this is not only for the nutritional value, but also to prevent predators from being attracted to the area where they have given birth and will possibly be hiding their young for atleast a few more hours.  Likewise, if a bird hatches their young, they eat the shells after their young are born to "clean up" their nests.  If they do this in nature, it probably is not likely to kill them in the backyard.  Plus, the calcium is needed and I have one girl that doesn't care for oyster shell, but she will eat shells that I have tossed in the compost pile, as will the other hens.

Have always done this. When we crack eggs, we toss the shells in a container next to the stove. When it's full, we spread them on a cookie sheet, toss them in the oven on very low for about 20 minutes to dry them out and make them very brittle and easy to crush. Then we put the crushed shells in a coffee container for use in the calcium hopper along with oyster shell. Never had an egg eater, either.

And yep, if someone drops an egg, everyone in the flock who sees it dives in to clean it up. If an egg is laying on the ground, unbroken, no one ever tries to break it open for a snack.
 

If you had a chicken with an disease and it died and your other chickens ate it then they will get the same disease.

Maybe, maybe not.  Conditions have to be right for disease transmission, so just eating a diseased carcass doesn't mean that all the animals that partake will get that disease....it all depends on just how that disease is transmitted, the immune system health of the live birds, the length of time the bird has been dead and how decomposition has changed the pathogen that may have caused the fatality, etc. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beekissed 

Maybe, maybe not.  Conditions have to be right for disease transmission, so just eating a diseased carcass doesn't mean that all the animals that partake will get that disease....it all depends on just how that disease is transmitted, the immune system health of the live birds, the length of time the bird has been dead and how decomposition has changed the pathogen that may have caused the fatality, etc. 

Well if it's a chicken in the coop it will not be dead long before it's eaten. That's a big reason you don't put a new bird in with your other birds right away. So it's probably more then maybe then maybe not.

If you bake the shells first, do they brown or do you take them out of the oven before that happens?

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Originally Posted by SouthernAlberta 

If you bake the shells first, do they brown or do you take them out of the oven before that happens?

No need to bake them crispy.  All you're doing in baking is speeding the drying process.  If shells are just loosely cast into a box, they'll dry themselves and become brittle, crumbling into bits, within a week.  If you bake to speed the drying process, it is only for a few minutes.  You're just trying to dry them.  It's easy to forget they are in the oven and incinerate them.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by adgcountrygirl 

Here's a thought...  Cattle and Horses are for the most part herbivors.  However cattle and horses BOTH eat the placenta after their babies are born.  Most behaviorist believe this is not only for the nutritional value, but also to prevent predators from being attracted to the area where they have given birth and will possibly be hiding their young for atleast a few more hours.  Likewise, if a bird hatches their young, they eat the shells after their young are born to "clean up" their nests.  If they do this in nature, it probably is not likely to kill them in the backyard.  Plus, the calcium is needed and I have one girl that doesn't care for oyster shell, but she will eat shells that I have tossed in the compost pile, as will the other hens.

I have to say, growing up we bred horses and I don't recall ever having one of the mares eat her placenta but maybe we removed it to soon. Maybe our mares just didn't want them...who knows. 

As far as giving chickens their shells I would be more worried about teaching them to eat their own eggs but I guess (hopefully) they're not smart enough to associate the shell with the egg - which is why you don't give them whole eggs to eat.