feeding eggs back to hens

maxpedley

Chirping
6 Years
Dec 31, 2013
351
16
73
Hi all
My hens are still laying well and seen as how I am getting around 13 eggs a day I can not eat that manyand I am also not being able to sell many. What I was wondering is if their is way to feed my eggs back to the hens. I know I cant just crack them open and feed them for obvious reasons so if anyone has any way of cooking them or making them into something to feed the chooks it would be great if you could tell me.
 
Since I've had problems with egg eaters in the past (usually started when it was well below zero & I didn't collect eggs so they froze & split) I err on the cautious side & just crack them into my biggest non-stick pan & sortof scramble them, cook until mostly done, let cool, then toss into the coop. By the time I'm up to that many eggs, my pan is usually so full I can barely stir
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Sometimes I throw in a bunch of stale grains, cereal, or whatever in there too. If you have dogs, fresh eggs are great for their coats...giving my rottie 2-3/day is about the only thing that keeps his shedding under control despite being fed great food; worked on my German shepherds too. You can either dry the eggshells & grind them in the blender/food processor down to safe size, or just put them in the compost. I used to let them eat the egg shells just sortof crushed up but I'm not convinced one of my drakes didn't make the connection since he was the worst egg eater I've ever seen. I swear he would over the hens (both duck & chicken) waiting for them to lay so he could snack! (and no, he didn't last long after I watched that and had confirmation it was him!)
 
So just grind the shell up in a blander? I didn't know ducks would eat eggs. Mine ducks have never eaten eggs. Thanks fotr the advice though.
 
So just grind the shell up in a blander? I didn't know ducks would eat eggs. Mine ducks have never eaten eggs. Thanks fotr the advice though.

Ducks turn into egg eaters about as often as chickens...which is to say not very if the chicken keeper is doing her job. Which I wasn't. Like I said, almost all of my problems have happened when it was so cold the eggs were freezing solid which makes them crack open. Then, because my crews always seem to investigate EVERYTHING, they would get a taste. Other than that one drake, I never had anyone that was hard to break of it once I got off my lazy rear and went back to collecting eggs even when it was -10 & I had dozens piled on the counter already.

You can feed the shell back to them, just if you put it in the cooked eggs make sure you blend it long enough to get the shell fragments small enough that they won't catch in their throat. I don't want to deal with another dish to wash & the duck egg shells are thick enough they don't break down enough so I skip the blender step & use the eggshells either for compost or crushing as slug barriers in my garden.
 
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I know what you mean with the duck eggs. I've had people buy my eggs and then complain that the shells were too hard to break.
 
I just scrambled a doz eggs, mixed in ~20 crushed microwaved shells and took them to my 7 hens who are very sweetly tolerating the latest Maine nor'easter. Thinking that they'd love them and I was really treating them as I've read on several sites, I was abruptly disappointed when they ALL turned up their beaks and sauntered back under the coop, leaving the eggs scattered. I'll never reveal this to my extended family who would kill me if they knew I'd just "wasted" a doz precious eggs. So, unless you have more eggs than you know what to do with, cook up just a few to assure that your hens will actually enjoy eating them! With my family all vying for my eggs, I don't have enough to be tossing in the hay.
 
I had to feed my chickens an egg breakfast this morning because my eggs were falling out of the basket :) I either scramble them, fry them, or boil them; doesn't matter which one I do because the chickens absolutely go nuts
 
So just grind the shell up in a blander? I didn't know ducks would eat eggs. Mine ducks have never eaten eggs. Thanks fotr the advice though.
The shells are awesome for calcium, beats have to buy oyster shell! I just throw my egg shells into a bowl and when the bowl gets full I throw them (in batches) into my food processor
 
Makes no difference how you cook the eggs as long as you chop them up. You get an egg eater when they make the connection between the egg and food. That connection usually comes from the shape of the egg.
 

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