“I want to know if you have had any bad luck with feeding your chickens egg shells. Specifically that they then decide to eat the eggs before I have taken them out the shell. I do not want to start bad habits, but I have always thought feeding them table scraps and kitchen waste along with their grain is good for a well rounded diet. Thanks for your great news letter.” ~ Alice McKee
Alice,
This is a wise question and I’m glad to answer it for you.
The key to feeding your chickens egg shells is to make sure they are ground up into small pieces and don’t resemble their original form.
I also would recommend drying the shells in a low temperature oven for awhile before returning them to you flock.
(For those who may not be familiar with this practice, egg shells are made up mostly of calcium, hens benefit from a calcium supplement in addition to their regular diet to be able to produce strong shells for the eggs they are laying as well as feather growth.)
Personally we have always used oyster shell.
There seems to be something about the law of diminishing returns that makes me hesitant to use egg shells exclusively as a calcium supplement. However, I’ve never tried it so that‘s just my opinion.
So Alice, I would definitely recommend some sort of calcium supplement, use whatever is easiest and most readily available.
