Feeding egg shells

[Delmar]

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Crush the shells and mix them in their feed.

So that's a no?

 

[KingJamesIV]

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This can be a tricky thing to do. Some people think its OK. The common thought however is this is not a good practice. What can happen a lot of the time your chickens will get a "taste" for egg shells. This can lead to pecking at the eggs they lay. Being winter and shorter days, egg laying will be at a minimum. Once they start cranking them out you may find some of them pecked open. I have a feed and supply store and I use oyster shells. They cost $1.75 for 10lbs. 10lbs of shells should be enough for 50lbs of feed. Good luck. I have some pictures of how I built my "calcium feeder" if you want to see.

> edited for spelling

 

[AinaWGSD]

I have a thread asking about the various ways people feed egg shells here https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=444677

How to feed egg shells is, like so many other things in life, mainly dependent on what works best for you. I think that it's a good idea to at least break them up so that they don't look like eggs. Some people have had luck with feeding the shells just cracked, but I figure chickens are smarter than many people give them credit for so why take the risk that they might associate the egg shells with the eggs that they are laying. You don't really have to cook them to kill the bacteria. Birds have a much faster GI transit time than humans (about 4 hours, vs 8-12 for humans), so they are less prone to bacterial food poisoning simply because food doesn't usually spend enough time in their system to cause a problem. Cooking them does make them easier to crush though I think.

 

[Mervin]

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I bake them off to dry them out and make them easier to crush. I've crushed them w/o and the membrane tends to make it a bit more of a pain.

 

[speckledhen]

After 30 minutes on a cookie sheet that dries them out and kills bacteria, they're easy to crush very finely. I have done it for years and I have never had one egg eater. If they don't recognize it as an egg, it won't change their behavior. If an egg drops and breaks on the ground in their presence, yes, they'll eat it, but that's normal and I have never had any hen become an habitual egg eater, not once. If an egg is on the ground, but not broken open, they just leave it.

 

[typnslow]

I cant wait to have egg shells to feed my birds
Heck i cant wait to have my birds

 

[cybercat]

I use a big butter bucket you know the 5lbs you buy at store. Put all egg shells in it and use a pestle to cruch after they dry a few days. I do not fed till I get alot which does not take long sometimes. Since I free range mine they get fed outside on the ground. When they see me with bucket they come a running. I just spread it around so they do not get too pushy with each other. All gone within 30 mins.

 

[mkearsley]

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I boil them if I'm boiling eggs, or I rinse the whites out, and crush the egg shells and spread them in part of the yard (my birds free-range). They gobble those bits up like there's no tomorrow! I also have free-access to oyster shells for them, but they seem to much rather eat the egg shells compared to the oyster shells.

 

[bluebird]

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Yep...that's what I do.

Works for me.

 

[babyrnlc]

My grandma used to have chickens and she told us to feed the shells. So we had been just crumbling them and then read on here about worrying about them eating eggs. So I have started microwaving the shells and then crumbling them. They love them. Have yet to have an egg cracked open from one of the girls.