egg shells as food?

[FlashPointFarm]

If you mix oyster shell with yogurt, cooked eggs and cayenne pepper powder, they will gobble it up. Are your egg shells weak/thin? If they are fine, your hens probably don't need the oyster shell you were leaving out. That may be why they aren't touch the bowl of oyster shell?

 

[Riven]

Egg shells don't compost, or so I've been told.

 

[ebonyann]

My only concern with throwing the shells out as-is is that I have heard that the raw egg membrane in the shell can prompt the chickens to become egg eaters, so that is why you bake them and get the shells nice and dry and cooked. I have never tryed feeding raw shells to see if it had any effect on them eating their eggs or not though, never wanted to chance it.

Edited for spelling

 

[Akane]

You dry the shells so you can crush them not to get rid of the membrane. Once crushed a chicken is not going to put together that these little bits and powder were an egg. Even humans sometimes aren't that smart. If you throw out large pieces of egg that still retain the shape though I could see some chicken possibly putting it together. Still quite unlikely though. I think there are going to have to be many other contributing factors to start egg eating and not just the feeding of whole raw egg shells.

 

[greyhorsewoman]

raw egg membrane in the shell can prompt the chickens to become egg eaters

Rumor, old wives' tale. I've been feeding eggshells back to my chickens daily (without microwaving, baking, crushing, or mixing in with anything else) for YEARS and never had a problem. The only time I had problems with chickens developing an egg eating habit is when their coop area was too small and not sufficient to provide enough 'entertainment.'​

 

[ebonyann]

Ok, good to know!

 

[chickenmeadow]

All of my egg shells are put on a napkin & microwaved for 2 minutes no matter if there's one or several. When you take them out they are dry so bacterial won't form & won't spoil; just fold napkin around them, crush with your hands, & save them in a container till there's enough to powder in a blender. This egg shell powder is good for gardens as a topping around plants, if you don't over blender it or just crush it, then it makes a good rough surface topping that keeps the slugs away from strawberries & adds nutrition to the soil. This powder makes excellent bedding/food (along with wheat bran, etc.) for raising mealworms to feed the chickens a "clean" protien.

Personally, I no longer feed chicken egg shell "byproducts" back to chickens, after a bad experience with a hen or two getting ideas after feed shells & breaking eggs, in a prior flock years ago. The "egg breaker" made a mess & who needs that. Besides crushed oyster shell (for calcium) for layers works very well, leave it out free feed for layers at all times (under a roof) & they will eat it when they want & need it. Non-layers (not producing eggs) don't usually need that much calcium & too much calcium can be bad for kidneys. There's good calcium along with other nutrition in alfalfa meal too as a additional supplement, or water soaked alfalfa pellets, or alfalfa hay. But, crushed oyster shell is a good primary source.

 

[Tweeza]

Georgia Rose (really Tweeza) :

My hens won't eat oyster shells. I put a dish out for them and they didn't touch it. The bowl filled with rain water and I ended up just throwing it out. Egg shells, on the other hand, go like hot cakes! Their eggs have nice strong shells on them also. I just put the egg shells in a bucket (cute little quart and 1/2 galvanized from TSC) and make sure they're not stacked/spooned. They dry real fast. Morning shells are usually dry by the evening, definitly by the next morning. I then crush them with a strong plastic bottle or jar, whatever is handy. I feed when their egg shell dish is empty or near empty.

Quote:
My hens produce hard shelled eggs. I had to wack an egg a couple times, on the edge of a cast iron skillet, this moring to get one to crack. My thoughts are, pioneers wouldn't have had access to oyster shells and would have fed back the egg shells back to their chickens. The egg shells along with the bugs the chickens could catch would have had to be enough. Just my thoughts.​