Chickens need grit in their diet so they can produce their egg shells. Without sufficient grit, they’ll produce soft shelled eggs – very strange and squidgy things. A useful source of grit for egg shells is – egg shells!

Whenever I use an egg, I place the broken shell into a bowl and save them until the bowl is full. (Don’t worry, they don’t smell bad.) Once I have enough shells, they are baked in the oven to sterilize them.  I just put them in a roasting tin in the bottom whenever I’m cooking something else in the oven – or I leave them in the Aga if it’s on.  When they have finished baking, I crush them by putting them in a carrier bag and beating them with whatever is to hand.

The crushed shells are mixed in with the chicken’s feed. They eat most of it, and it keeps their shells healthy and hard!