Egg Shells as Nutrition.

[Ridgerunner]

A lot of the calcium they eat, whether from chicken feed, oyster shells, egg shells, creepy crawlies, plants they might eat, or even limestone gravel they use as grit if that is your native rock does not get dissolved by the digestive juices and goes right on through the chicken and out the back end. That’s a benefit to using chicken poop in making your compost for your garden, calcium is an essential nutrient for garden plants.

The calcium has to be dissolved by digestive juices for the body to be able to absorb it and use it. The smaller the pieces of calcium the more surface area for those juices to work so the more efficient that process is. Since oyster shell, egg shell, and other things are ground up in the gizzard the chicken can manage that fairly well though there are some differences in how well different things are absorbed. As long as the egg shells are hard they are getting enough calcium and processing it, no matter the source.

 

[Folly's place]

That's true, but the hen may metabolize her bones for calcium before the shells get consistently weak. I think that high producing hens are much more on the edge metabolically than others. Mary

 

[Ridgerunner]

Mary, I’ve read that before too. There are a lot of things that could possibly happen. I often wonder how often they actually do. I don’t know the answer to that but I do often wonder. I do think offering calcium supplements is the right thing to do, especially if we offer any treats or let them forage at all, even if the egg shells are hard. It doesn’t hurt and might help. Doesn’t cost much either.

If you are offering calcium supplement, either oyster shell or egg shells, and a hen is metabolizing her bones or you get soft shelled-eggs after they have matured and gotten the kinks out of their internal egg making factory like some pullets just starting to lay need to do, then there is something wrong with the hen. She is not processing the calcium correctly or her instincts are messed up and she is not eating the extra calcium she needs. If the entire flock is laying thin-shelled or soft-shelled eggs then you have a flock problem. If it is just one hen, it is an individual hen problem.

An occasional soft egg is not a big deal. The internal egg making factory is fairly complicated, you can have an occasional blip. If you are regularly getting a soft-shelled egg, you need to investigate and maybe do something. But if you consistently get practically all eggs hard-shelled, I see no reason at all to worry.