feeding hard-boiled eggs

[jan777]

This is my first experience raising chickens. In the beginning I was told to feed the chicks a little hard-boiled egg with their food; they are 1 1/2 mos now. If I continue with this will it cause them to want to eat their own eggs? I have 9 chickens & they only get 1 egg mixed in their food. They love it & I hate to stop giving them this treat; it's so much fun to watch them. Is this ok or am I doing something really wrong.

 

[Ceilismom]

As long as the hard boiled egg is not whole, still in the shell, the chickens are not going to equate hard boiled eggs with eating fresh eggs.

 

[TheRookie]

A lot of people feed their chickens hard-boiled eggs. I know I plan to continue doing so. Unless your hen actually starts eating their own eggs, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[goldnchocolate]

They love scrambled eggs, too!

 

[Fierlin1182]

Any sort of cooked egg is fine. (Mine love fried) I suppose cooked egg would taste and look different from freshly laid eggs, so I don't think they'd recognise it.
They also love cooked chicken, weirdly enough.

 

[BackyardCoop]

My babies LOVE a hard boiled egg. I just take it down to the coop and smash it with my fish (shell and all). They go wild!

 

[AnnieBLix]

I contacted my fertile egg supplier this morning to tell her we'd had a hatch and she told me to feed the chicks hard boiled egg for a week or so.

I was initially shocked! Really..... hard boiled egg! They've just come out of an egg!

So, I Googled it! God Bless Google!

Apparently it's a baby chick super-food. They really thrive on it. And it's a food source used by hen keepers for years! So, I boiled and egg, mashed it down and low and behold, Mummy called the chicks when I put it in with them and out they came and started to eat. They loved it!

The old ways are the best, eh?

 

[Judy]

Some of my excess eggs are fed to the chickens. I scramble them, really out of habit, plus if there happens to be salmonella in the flock, it is killed by the cooking. I like that it gives them a source of animal protein, as most feeds at least around here have no animal protein. I've read of old timers dealing with poopy eggs by breaking them on the floor of the coop -- of course they eat this right away, and even raw, it supposedly does not lead to egg eating. Some people blend the raw eggs then cook them, so the chickens get the egg shells, too -- a source of calcium, of course. I'm reluctant to do this, but plenty of people do feed their shells back to them, and I'm probably being foolish.

From reading, I believe egg eating is a more complex thing, probably a learned behavior, and unlikely if you collect eggs often and they are not crowded, so they don't usually get accidentally broken.

 

[Eggcessive]

Scrambling the eggs and mashing them with a potato masher is easiest for me. My chickens will trample each other for this. I crumble up the saved shells in a plastic freezer bag by hand after baking them on a low 250 degrees for 10 minutes. It is clean and makes them crunchy.

 

[BeulahBreezes]

I feed my 6 1/2 week old eggs occasionly....these seem to prefer scrambled over hard-boiled!