Feeding Eggs

[Kakapothechicken]

Hi. I have a large number of eggs that are too old to eat but could be well cooked for animals.
I am wondering if it would work to hard boil some eggs and then mash them with the shells (or put them through a food processor lightly) so that the chickens get some calcium as well as protein? Would they recognise this as egg and cause problems with egg breaking or would it be different enough for them not to make the connection? Will they be ok with the shells mashed in? Some of them are having some issues with shell quality so could do with some added calcium.

I was thinking of adding in some porridge oats to make it a kind of lumpy mixture that they can peck at.

Any help or other ideas for feeding eggs would be appreciated!

 

[Shadrach]

I'm not sure I understand "too old to eat." If the eggs are rotten then they are not fit for consumption by you or the chickens.
Sometimes older eggs are not great for recipies that require the white and yolk to be seperated because the yolk breaks, but are otherwise fine to eat.
While boiling them is an easy method of cooking them one doesn't get to see the condition of the egg before cooking.
Ideally if one is concerened about the age of an egg the best way to cook them is by breaking each one into a bowl and checking them and then scrambling.
I don't believe there is any evidence that feeding chickens eggs in any form leads to chickens breaking eggs to eat at the nest site.

Some people do feed eggshells back to their chickens. The prefered method is to wash the eggs carefully and dry the egg shells in a hot oven. Theidea is the oven heating kills any harmfull bacteria on/in the shell. Remember egg shells are porus and bacteria can travel through the shell.

For the calcium issue I would be inclined to buy some calcium citrate or calcium carbonate and mix that in with the scrambled eggs rather than process the egg shells.

 

[Sussex19]

I am wondering if it would work to hard boil some eggs and then mash them with the shells (or put them through a food processor lightly) so that the chickens get some calcium as well as protein?

This is what I always do when I have too many eggs.
I just hard boil them, and the use a potato masher to mash them all up. They love it, and eat most of the bits of shell as well.

 

[Cluckwork Orange]

I hard boil a few dozen a week, and smash them up with a potato masher, shells and all.
Usually with a scoop of layer feed and some water to make a nice eggy porridge.

they looooove it.

 

[Kakapothechicken]

Thanks for all the responses! They have been thoroughly boiled and are currently cooling, I will mash them up when they have cooled and see what the chickens think!

 

[Kakapothechicken]

I'm not sure I understand "too old to eat." If the eggs are rotten then they are not fit for consumption by you or the chickens.
Sometimes older eggs are not great for recipies that require the white and yolk to be seperated because the yolk breaks, but are otherwise fine to eat.
While boiling them is an easy method of cooking them one doesn't get to see the condition of the egg before cooking.
Ideally if one is concerened about the age of an egg the best way to cook them is by breaking each one into a bowl and checking them and then scrambling.
I don't believe there is any evidence that feeding chickens eggs in any form leads to chickens breaking eggs to eat at the nest site.

Some people do feed eggshells back to their chickens. The prefered method is to wash the eggs carefully and dry the egg shells in a hot oven. Theidea is the oven heating kills any harmfull bacteria on/in the shell. Remember egg shells are porus and bacteria can travel through the shell.

For the calcium issue I would be inclined to buy some calcium citrate or calcium carbonate and mix that in with the scrambled eggs rather than process the egg shells.

Any eggs that float are removed. The eggs are old ones that are technically edible but of an age where it is safest to cook them thoroughly, nobody here likes completely hard boiled eggs but the animals don’t care!

 

[DLA]

Any eggs that float are removed. The eggs are old ones that are technically edible but of an age where it is safest to cook them thoroughly, nobody here likes completely hard boiled eggs but the animals don’t care!

When I have excess eggs I just scramble them up including broken up shells to make sure germs are killed and mix them in with some feed in a pan. They love it and I've never had any problems with them going after whole eggs they just laid, I don't think they recognize that the scrambles are the same thing.

 

[NanaK]

If they are too old for me to eat I do not feed them to any animals.

How old are they?
Stored in the fridge or counter?
Were they washed before storage?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

BYC did the math. Yes you can. If you are interested in how that affects their daily intake, those numbers should help - particularly if you plan to displace a large portion of their feed with eggs (and shells) regularly.

As an occasional treat, its absolutely fine, with no glaring imbalances.

 

[Cluckwork Orange]

BYC did the math. Yes you can. If you are interested in how that affects their daily intake, those numbers should help - particularly if you plan to displace a large portion of their feed with eggs (and shells) regularly.

As an occasional treat, its absolutely fine, with no glaring imbalances.

interesting.
I got curious about dry weight protein content, because water isn't food. but I am lazy, so I only looked up a nutrition label for dehydrated eggs.

it says 13g=1 large egg
5g fat
6g protein

so that's a whopping 46% protein and 38% fat

(yes this is a lazy calculation with stacked rounding errors)