I have always given mine whole eggs to eat all these years and never had an chronic egg eater. Any eggs too poopy go to the dogs or chickens, whomever gets to it first.
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Thanks. Yes, I forgot a bunch in the oven this morning. Lets just say burned shells are very stinky! (My girls are too young to need calcium yet, I was just experimenting and planning to feed baked shells to my dogs.)It's easy to forget they are in the oven and incinerate them.![]()
I have always given mine whole eggs to eat all these years and never had an chronic egg eater. Any eggs too poopy go to the dogs or chickens, whomever gets to it first.
I have to say, growing up we bred horses and I don't recall ever having one of the mares eat her placenta but maybe we removed it to soon. Maybe our mares just didn't want them...who knows.
As far as giving chickens their shells I would be more worried about teaching them to eat their own eggs but I guess (hopefully) they're not smart enough to associate the shell with the egg - which is why you don't give them whole eggs to eat.
PS... Mad cow was actually from infected sheep originally. Parts of infected sheep were mixed into the cattle feed. Later it was also infected cow fed back to the cows. But cows don't eat other dead cows, sheep don't eat other dead sheep. Chickens eating shells is actually a natural occurance in nature without the help of humans, but you probably got that from my earlier comment plus a number of others.Ok so the economic motivations for feeding chickens their own eggshells are obvious, and the girls certainly seem to enjoy them...
My question is whether anyone has ever read or heard of research done on the long-term safety of chickens eating their own eggshells. For example, the lethal mad cow disease may have not ever existed, and certainly wouldn't have ever spread had people not been feeding cow parts to their cows. So what about our lovely chickens eating their eggs? Any thoughts?