Can chickens eat their own eggs?

[Annalyse]

Collected the eggs just now, one fell out of my pocket. It was my BO big egg, sadly it broke. Was still in tac just cracks and was gonna be leaking at any moment. So I threw it into the run, the chickens loved it. Is this alright? I've seen ppl do it before just didnt have the guts to try it with my own. It was a reflex to just throw it in the run.

 

[chickentrains]

yep, they can have eggs

 

[SueT]

I cook eggs for my chickens, I would be concerned that giving them a raw egg would encourage egg eating. But that said, if an egg gets broken they have the instinct to eat it. I don’t believe mine have ever intentionally broken eggs.

 

[Brooks_]

They can have eggs, but best to not give in solid egg form.

 

[ChickForLife]

Yes.

 

[orloffer]

As others have said, yes, chickens can eat their own eggs. Once one of my hens laid an egg outside the nesting box, and before I could get outside to remove it, they had trampled, broken, and started to consume it. Luckily they never started breaking open any of their other eggs. It seems like you situation was similar to mine, so I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Yes. I just fed 30 old (9 days) raw eggs to my 50-odd birds today. By throwing them into the air, and letting them break on impact. I won't do this more than twice a week, when I have excess eggs.

I have never had a problem with chickens attacking whole eggs in the year I've been doing this, though there are enough claims of it happening that I believe it sometimes does. When my birds have enough calcium, they will leave the shells on the ground and focus on the albumin and yolks. My ducks, who don't much like oyster shell, do a good job of finding the egg shells the chickens ignore.

That said, raw (or cooked) eggs should be considered a treat, and kept to 10% (by weight) of their daily diet or less. There was another question on it earlier today, I did the math.