Homemade oyster shell?

[jobeibi]

My friend owns an oyster bar. Is there any reason I shouldn't get free shells from him and smash 'em up for the chickens myself? What's special about commercially prepared oyster shell?

 

[Buttercup Chillin]

Commercial is washed, dried, probably bleached and crushed.

I had various sea shells out in the flower bed for years, then got chickens again. They ate those shells down to stubbs before I could get to the store and buy a bag of crushed oyster shells. Then they nibbled on both.

Only problem I can think of is the salt from the seawater. Wash and scrub them good to dilute that, then I would just toss them out. I'd try it. Mine sure would eat them. But I would still give them free choice of the commercial oyster shell. They'll eat from both, I bet and think they are in chicken heaven.

Chickens do need a little salt in their diet but not much. You probably should check to see what symptoms of too much salt in their diet would be and watch for that.

People toss their chickens, shrimp shells and such all the time. Mine don't like shrimp shells but they go for Crawdad shells. Must be the spice.

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

Other than being pretty hard to crush, there's nothing wrong with free shells

 

[kannna]

I smash quahog (it's a hard shell clam) shells up with a hammer on the patio to a small grain and dust point. I do rinse them before hand. They do eat it and their egg shells are quite hard at this point. At least two whacks to crack.

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
And baked to sterilize and make it more digestible--at least the stuff I bought today is. It isn't the size that's important but how ready it is for the birds to absorb the calcium. Otherwise you're just giving them grit, not that they can't eat it, just that it isn't doing them much good. A lot of work to save a few pennies.

 

[Imp]

It's been posted in the past that people rinse, put in a burlap bag and run it over with their cars.
Never tried it myself.

Imp