Feeding the chickens crushed egg shells??????

[Ventura974]

Hello BYC friends I live in Connecticut and a friend of mines that has chickens in FL told me that she crushed the egg shells, baked them and fed them back to her chickens. Is this ok to do? What are the nutritional values of feeding the chickens the crushed egg shells of their own eggs. I usually just crush them and add them to my compost. Please advice.

Sincerely,
Ralph Ventura
Eastford, CT

 

[ChicKat]

Hi Ralph,

Crushed egg shells contain the calcium (calcium carbonate) that chickens use to make their egg shells... so a good way to get calcium to chickens. My chickens prefer crushed chicken eggshells to oyster shell. I have oyster shell always available and chicken eggshells when I use eggs. I "cook" mine in my microwave, because I want to kill any microbes and make them dry to crush well. I should add, I microwave them when heating water in the micro--- for the well being of the microwave.

When I composted eggshells, they never disintegrated quickly, and our soil has plenty of calcium in it already -- so mine are best recycled through the chickens. I was happy for the change.

 

[OkChickens]

I Crush them up and throw them in there runs. I use the eating egg shells and also the shells from the Incubator. My Chickens also prefer egg shells over Oyster shells.

Nate

 

[SteveBaz]

Yes. I have eggs daily and I crush them up and throw them to the kids out the window into the pan I feed veggies in. They seem to mostly gone daily. The kids will not eat things they do not like.

 

[duckinnut]

I feed the shells back to the girls also. But I don't bake,nuke or otherwise,just let them get nice and dry,crush them and mix into the scratch grains that are given to them in the morn. I figure anything that could be on the eggshell came from the chicken to begin with. Baking does speed up the drying process though but wouldn't turn on the oven just for that. Often will just place them on the furnace in a bowl to speed up the drying not to mention the bucket of grain is right there so.

 

[AlienChick]

We eat eggs every morning, so I toss out all the egg shells for the girls.

I usually step on them to crush them a bit.

If I eat eggs at night, I toss those shells out for the dogs to munch on.

 

[Fred's Hens]

The calcium in the egg shells is "free". Why not feed them back?

If you feed layer, you've already paid for the calcium added to that feed. Feeding back the egg shells, in addition to the calcium continuing to be fed in the layer, provides them with essentially twice the calcium of layer feed alone. (allowing for some loss in excretion) For this reason, a lot of folks never find the need to have the added expense of buying oyster shells.

 

[JodyJo]

I feed layer feed, oyster shell in a feeder on wall, free choice and I dry out my old shells, (I don't nuke or boil them) and add them to the oyster shell. I have wonderfully strong shells and happy chickens...I don't add it to any feed...they will eat it if they need it.

 

[OkChickens]

Fred's Hens :

The calcium in the egg shells is "free". Why not feed them back?

If you feed layer, you've already paid for the calcium added to that feed. Feeding back the egg shells, in addition to the calcium continuing to be fed in the layer, provides them with essentially twice the calcium of layer feed alone. (allowing for some loss in excretion) For this reason, a lot of folks never find the need to have the added expense of buying oyster shells.

That is a great point Fred! I have on average 80+ birds a year and I rotate my RSL layers every year and My family does not eat a lot of eggs a week maybe 1-1.5 dozen a week and we feed the shells back in place of oyster shells. Also the Dried ones from the hatcher work well also. It just depends on how many eggs I hatch. This saves us $15 for not having to buy 50lbs of oyster shells.

Nate​

 

[Ventura974]

Well thank you everyone for all of your helpful responses. I believe I will add the egg shells in the girl's morning feed instead of trying to compost them. Bock booock <(*)