Feeding egg shells

[jrudolph305]

I do the baking and then into the food processor to get the shells somewhat fine. I then add them to their daily oatmeal at the end of cooking while still hot--yes I give them oatmeal every morning. I make enough to last 7-10 days at a time. I found that if I grind them fine the girls will eat them. When I first started they would eat around the bigger pieces and leave them. I wanted to make sure they get their calcium.

 

[Lostbody]

Quote:
That's exactly what I do, I like to let the shells dry, but I never bake them or anything, and I always crush them.

Ditto!
I do rinse the shells before I set them in the bowl to dry, but otherwise it's the same.
To be honest, if I had more time, I might process them differently.

 

[mkearsley]

I boil the shells, dry them & then crunch them up with my fingers before I feed them back. The only reason I do this is I want to get rid of all the raw egg goop so that my birds don't think that eating the newly-laid eggs is a good way to get food. I never thought of baking them, that'd do the same thing, I guess, but boiling is fairly quick - only about 5 minutes.

Mine prefer the eggshells to the oyster shells. When I toss eggshells out with other treats, they hit the eggshells first, even though there's a perfectly good bowlful of oystershells right next to them.

 

[royalhighlandbantams]

I hatch a lot of eggs, so I drop the shells in a plastic lined waste paper basket and crush them down with an old baseball bat. I crush them for two reasons. First I don't want to let the chickens see the original shape and associate them with the eggs they lay. second when they are crushed they are not as attractive to my Standard Poodle who found the uncrushed eggs to be a tasty snack, especially when noone was at home. Every now and then when we find a cracked egg, we will feed the chickens a raw egg or two, but we crack it into a dish outside the coup where they can't see us and take the shell away. When we have a full load we dump the raw shells in a pile in the coup, where the chickens eat every single bit. So far I haven't had a problem with any egg eaters, but you usually can't tell unless you catch them in the act because they will eat the whole thing.

 

[rebel-rousing-at-night]

Hi,
I have an extra stainless steel 96 0z.dog pan that I threw the shells into.(this is for the ones I don't use for the chickens right away.)As it fills up I just mash them down a little but when I get serious about the shells I use my potato mashing hand tool and they mash down really well for me.

 

[AinaWGSD]

Wow, this thread grew two whole pages while I was at work today! I bake mine mostly because I remember reading somewhere (probably several somewheres on here actually) that other people did and also because I use my mortar and pestle for human food too and I hate to wash it any more than I have to. It also makes sense to me that it would make the shells easier to break up. I crush the eggs so that my girls can't recognize the shape of the shells and I use the mortar and pestle simply because I can. If I didn't have that fun little toy, I'd probably use the rolling pin or the meat tenderizer to crush them.

 

[dmiravalle]

Quote:
Same here - done it that way for 15 or more years, can't really remember not doing that way.

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

I make my chickens a special "treat".

Usually I collect eggshells in a bowl on the stove. When I have enough and a very poopy egg, I put all in the blender with some water, pulse, pour into a bowl. Add a little unbleached flour, ground flax seed, powdered milk (or whole goat milk or whey), baking powder, sometimes garlic or cinnamon ... mix well, microwave until done, turn out, let cool, and divide among the pens.

They LOVE this and they have no clue that they are eating their eggs and shells.

No oyster grit here. Don't see the need.

 

[CathyM]

It's good to read this forum and see the variety of replies... as a newbie, I don't want to hurt my hens with the wrong food... I have been drying and crushing my shells by hand, but not baking. Since I generally forget about them drying, they have been totally dry by the time I remember about them!

 

[Talihofarms]

Quote:
x2

We also throw them into the feed mill, when mixing up their feed for the week.