What can you do with egg shells?

We try not to waste anything here on the farm. There’s usually a use for just about every morsel and scrap. Including egg shells.

I keep a container on the kitchen counter and as I use eggs (almost ever day) I toss the shells into the container and let them dry them out a bit. After a few days, I crush them up using the bottom of a cup. Then they go into the dog food or back to the chickens to eat.

Why? The egg shells provide natural calcium.

For the dog food additive, I put them in the food processor along with chicken, whole eggs, bone broth, rice and veggies to make a nutritious dog food topper. My dogs go nuts over this stuff!

For the chickens, I just offer them crushed as a free choice option. The added calcium helps to ensure any future eggs that are laid, have a strong shell. The hens will clean out the whole bowl in a few hours.

You can also use crushed egg shells in your garden, sprinkling them at the base of plants that are susceptible to slugs and many pests, while giving your plants an organic fertilizer. Slugs don’t like to crawl over the shells and will avoid those plants. You can also mix them in the soil to help prevent blossom-end rot. Tomatoes love egg shells!

And finally, egg shells are great for your compost pile, adding calcium carbonate the to soil as it breaks down.

So don’t throw those egg shells away! There are plenty of good uses for them.