Clam shells (before I feed to my chickens)

[nuthatched]

I came across this post when I searched crawfish . . . we recently boiled some crawfish and I'm wondering if I should save the shells for my chicks when they start laying. Sorry, they are not getting the meat, we ate that.

Since they're boiled with spices I was also wondering if I should soak/boil them to remove the salt/seasonings or if it's unnecessary.

My oldest chicks are 9 weeks so I plan to freeze them until they need extra calcium for egg laying.

Craw fish shells aren't calcium based and will likely get stuck in their crop, of they show any interest.
They have nutrition but not anything viable.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Oh they will eat the whole shrimp shell. There isn’t much calcium there - shrimp are chitin not calcium shelled - but apparently they are yummy for chickens.

Some parts of a shrimp or crawfish shell are calcium, the really hard parts like the pincers. The softer translucent parts like the tails are chitin. Chitin contains no calcium. Chitin is not a calcium supplement. Any calcium benefit will come from the hard parts, like the claws.

There are some nutritional benefits from chitin but supposedly chitin is mostly indigestible. The only study I could find on feeding chitin to chickens was with broilers. Chitin improved gut health but did not lead to any better weight gain.

I did not come up with anything bad about feeding them chitin but I could not find a lot of benefits either other than improved gut health. They get chitin from some bugs too, like grasshoppers.

I don't see anything wrong with feeding them the crawfish or shrimp shells. There probably are some benefits as long as you don't overdo it.