Question about feeding dried egg shells

[Charisse66]

My chickens are 19/20 weeks old and one of my hens started laying yesterday yay!! So I have oyster shell supplement separate and they pick at it a bit so I started drying and crushing egg shells for them- man do they love them. My question is: should I be careful on how much I give them? I read too much can hurt them. BTW my sex link hen started laying after giving this, maybe a coincidence. Help, I don’t want to hurt my babies

 

[nuthatched]

Mine prefer flakes oyster shell, itight be Wirth a shot.
Their own egg shells won't hurt them unless they get an impaction, so I'd definitely limit their access.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I'd keep an eye on consumption but generally chickens shouldn't go to town on eggshells, though they do need to consume more eggshell in volume vs oyster shell to get the same amount of calcium.

As some hens don't care for oyster shell as much I offer both mixed together and just let them pick what they want.

 

[Charisse66]

Mine prefer flakes oyster shell, itight be Wirth a shot.
Their own egg shells won't hurt them unless they get an impaction, so I'd definitely limit their access.

Thank you, I will look into the flakes

 

[NatJ]

My chickens are 19/20 weeks old and one of my hens started laying yesterday yay!! So I have oyster shell supplement separate and they pick at it a bit so I started drying and crushing egg shells for them- man do they love them. My question is: should I be careful on how much I give them? I read too much can hurt them. BTW my sex link hen started laying after giving this, maybe a coincidence. Help, I don’t want to hurt my babies

If you are worried about your chickens getting too much calcium from eating eggshells, I do not think that will be a problem. Chickens are usually good at self-regulating calcium. When extra calcium causes problems, it is usually because the extra calcium was mixed into the feed so the chickens could not avoid it (example: layer pellets have too much calcium for young chicks.)

A while back I did some arithmetic about how much calcium a hen needs, and how much is in an eggshell: a laying hen would need around 2 eggshells per day, plus the calcium in a typical chick starter (lower calcium than layer feed). Due to individual variation, some hens might need more than that each day. Unless you are giving very large amounts of eggshells to a very small number of chickens, they won't be able to eat enough eggshell to hurt themselves, even if they wanted to.

 

[Charisse66]

If you are worried about your chickens getting too much calcium from eating eggshells, I do not think that will be a problem. Chickens are usually good at self-regulating calcium. When extra calcium causes problems, it is usually because the extra calcium was mixed into the feed so the chickens could not avoid it (example: layer pellets have too much calcium for young chicks.)

A while back I did some arithmetic about how much calcium a hen needs, and how much is in an eggshell: a laying hen would need around 2 eggshells per day, plus the calcium in a typical chick starter (lower calcium than layer feed). Due to individual variation, some hens might need more than that each day. Unless you are giving very large amounts of eggshells to a very small number of chickens, they won't be able to eat enough eggshell to hurt themselves, even if they wanted to.

Thank you so very much- I am giving it to them separately

 

[NatJ]

Thank you so very much- I am giving it to them separately

You're welcome.

Yes, I thought you were giving the shells separately. I just mentioned the other case (mixed into feed) as a comparison. The difference in safe vs. dangerous is mostly based on whether the chickens have a choice about how much calcium they eat

 

[Charisse66]

You're welcome.

Yes, I thought you were giving the shells separately. I just mentioned the other case (mixed into feed) as a comparison. The difference in safe vs. dangerous is mostly based on whether the chickens have a choice about how much calcium they eat

I appreciate all the advice and knowledge, I am a newbie so taking it all in