Okay to feed chickens egg shells?

[farmgirl02]

Thanks, everybody! On the way to do some on other threads like this. You guys really helped.

 

[Mana81]

how old do they have to be to give them egg shells?

 

[Ridgerunner]

The reason you give them egg shells is because they need extra calcium for their own egg shells when they are laying. So give them egg shells when they start laying, not before. They may or may not eat them.

Chickens can get calcium from a lot of different places, their Layer feed, some creepy-crawlies they eat, some plants supply calcium, and if your native rock is limestone they’ll get calcium from the rock they eat as grit. If they are getting enough calcium already, they may not eat the egg shells.

 

[chickenlver2013]

When the cartons get full I just feed the hens their own eggs by smashing them on the ground I've been doing that for a year and never had an egg eater. I guess they can't figure out how to eat an un cracked shell LOL

 

[TheEggCollecter]

Yes, definitely crush them up into tiny pieces or the chickens will become little devils who break and eat the eggs.

They will then teach the other hens to do the same.

 

[heartsizedfarm]

I feed crushed egg shells. Seems right not to waste them and I assume people have been doing it for hundreds of years. My hens haven't yet gone after their own eggs, unless one is rolled out of the box or dropped etc.

 

[JadedPhoenix]

I microwave my shells to cook the remaining whites that are inside then crush them and mix them in the oyster shells. My girls seem to be able to home in on them though. I just make sure that I have them finely crushed so they look more like the grit and shell since I don't want to encourage them to eat their eggs before I can.

 

[chad-o]

There's never a problem unless your chickens recognize the crushed eggshell as eggs. They need the calcium and whatever way they get is just fine.

 

[chooks4life]

I've fed mine their own shells for 20 years. I don't crush, bake, anything like that. I just crack the egg and put the shell in the bowl with all the other kitchen scraps for the birds. I've not had an egg eater from doing this, but the older hens sure love eating the egg shells!

X2. Never, ever had a problem with egg eating until I brought in a new hen who taught the others. Even then, the more instinctive hens took great umbrage at the desecration of their clutches and didn't join in. I even threw older eggs straight back to them whenever I set a clutch and found some not developing, or if they went uneaten for too long in the cupboard, or if I found illicit clutches and doubted the freshness, or if they were too dirty to bother with... And I often gave convalescent animals egg in its shell, lol, still no egg eating issues. They're perfectly capable of breaking the eggshell into sizes they can swallow easily so I never tried making it powder for them, or baking or rinsing it.

On the topic of replacing shell grit with eggshell, I wouldn't do it entirely. Unless you're on ground with good natural roughage like angular stones. Even round's better than none. Eggshell is a fine replacement for oystershell or other shell grits in the short to medium term, but it breaks much, much easier and faster, becoming absorbed with the rest of the nutrients, and if you have a bird that is a bit silly with swallowing long pieces of grass or anything like that, string, feathers, whatever, the eggshells won't necessarily cut it in her gut, and that's where seriously hard and long lived grits like oystershell come into their own. It can be a matter of life or death to make sure they have some quite hard grits.