I'm just curious as to how people feed egg shells back to their chickens. I have been baking mine in a low (350* or so) oven for 10-15 minutes and grinding them with my mortar and pestle then mixing the ground shells in with their afternoon treat. So how does everyone else do it?
I just bake mine, and crush them up with my fingers, and feed them with other table scrapes. My grandparents when they had chickens just threw everything into a coffe can sitting on the stove and tool them out the next morning when they went to do the milking and feeding the chickens thing. They never baked theirs. That grinding thing seems like a good ideal though.
Pretty much the same. Just pop them into a oven in coffee can or something, following the removal of the dish being baked. Turn oven off. There is plenty of heat for them to crunch up. Why wouldn't you re-cycle them? They don't create any bad habits. They are just brown powder dumped into the feed box.
The past couple of days I've been feeding them the frozen eggs I'm finding in their nest boxes. I just toss them in boiling water for ten minutes or so, let cool for a bit, then throw the whole thing, including the shell, in my Krups mini grinder and pulse it 4 or 5 times. Wow do they go nuts for that! If I'm just giving them shells I plop them in boiling water for a few seconds then dry them out in a very low oven for a half hour or so (or just let them sit overnight) then I toss them in the grinder and pulse a few times so there are very small pieces but little powder. Then I just sprinkle them on the ground.
I use a round cake pan (trust me don't use something you'd like to use again!) to keep mine in. When ever I use the oven for something I throw the pan in there. They dry out while the oven is pre heating. I cover them with a paper towel and crush them up. Take the whole pan outside and throw it to them. That's it!! Don't have to dirty anything else!!
I just throw mine out to them, never have baked them I know everyone will say this is a BIG No No.... but with my one flock of chickens every once in a while ( been about 4 months ) I throw a raw egg out for them. Never had a problem, I would not recommend this because I know a lot of people have had problems doing this. A lot of people around here throw the shells out and don't bake them and have never had problems. I have decided to stopped the raw eggs because a lot of people say not to but while I did it was fine, I do rinse the egg shells before I feed them out, not sure if it make a difference
