FINCHforum

I have read articles about feeding Gouldians Egg shell.
Is this important ? and how often should you feed them this ?
I would imagine you would just have to grind it all up in a chopper, right ?

JerseyGuy

HI Patrick,

Yes, feeding egg shells Is very important for Calcium.
I hard boiled eggs, which I peel and make into my birdie egg food, allow the shells to dry, and crush them into tiny bits, which I mix into my my birds grit and offer to all the kids (they love it).

I mash dry shells up. I don't wash out any adherent egg white as that is simply more protein, but do leave them out to dry thoroughly.
You can use one of those cheap coffee bean grinders but the end result can be very fine powder unless you are careful.
My current preferred way is to manually crush them up.

Birds love shells.

My birds love egg shells, I add them to my mineral mix that I offer, so they can have them free choice all the time. Great source of calcium. You can nuke the shells left over from your breakfasts (or other cooking) for 3 minutes on high, and that makes them quite brittle and easy to crush.

Egg shells are a very important part of a gouldians diet mixed with other forms of micro mineral grit, I'd feed this continuesly all the way through the breeding season along with soak seed,

Incidentally I'd also increase the amount of plain canary seed to the gouldians diet as they are normally very partial to this whilst breeding

I hard boil eggs and just give them a couple pieces of the shell when I peel the egg. The bigger the pieces the more they like them. They will play all day breaking off pieces.
The hard boiled egg is an excellent source of many vitamins and minerals especially Vitamin D which they need to absorb the calcium.
All the remaining shell I add to my mineral mix.
I found if you microwave and/or bake the shell is becomes much more brittle and sharp. I don't like to offer pieces that way, for me it's like a butter knife vs a steak knife, though if you prefer to crush the shell to tiny pieces or powder it's much easier.

good luck

I boil my eggs put them in fridge to cool and use one of those vintage choppers/ its a glass jar with a round piece of wood that comes out at the bottom with the chopper built into the cover and it screws on put on flat surface and push down on chopper it works great most of you young bird lovers probablly have no idea what I am talking about

Barbara wrote: I boil my eggs put them in fridge to cool and use one of those vintage choppers/ its a glass jar with a round piece of wood that comes out at the bottom with the chopper built into the cover and it screws on put on flat surface and push down on chopper it works great most of you young bird lovers probablly have no idea what I am talking about

Don't you worry Barbara....lols I know exactly what yer on about, I've got one of the old school / old fashioned meat mincer that clamps to the front of a work bench, I used to use this for mincing up hard boiled eggs etc but don't bother using it now, i find that the popular proprietary brands of egg food are now far more easier and superior to use and mix with other ingredients

Can you mix the ground up Egg shells with their seed mix ?

How do you offer it ? On a Plate on the floor of the cage, or in
their food/seed cups ?

So far, my Gouldian boys are not interested in Boiled egg,
and I'm really wasting a lot of good eggs

JerseyGuy Have you tried sprinkling some of their seed mix on top of the boiled egg? That may tempt them to try it. Another thing, sometimes mashed boiled egg is still too moist for some birds--add a little yellow corn meal to the mix to dry it out, see if they will try that.

You can add the egg shell to their seed mix, but a lot of it might be wasted. I have a cup of mineral mix in my cages at all times. I just leave it until it either needs replenishing or has poop in it. This mineral mix is mainly crushed oyster shell, charcoal, a bit of sea salt, and crushed egg shells (plus a few other things), and is very necessary for the birds' health IMO.

Sally wrote: JerseyGuy Have you tried sprinkling some of their seed mix on top of the boiled egg? That may tempt them to try it. Another thing, sometimes mashed boiled egg is still too moist for some birds--add a little yellow corn meal to the mix to dry it out, see if they will try that.

You can add the egg shell to their seed mix, but a lot of it might be wasted. I have a cup of mineral mix in my cages at all times. I just leave it until it either needs replenishing or has poop in it. This mineral mix is mainly crushed oyster shell, charcoal, a bit of sea salt, and crushed egg shells (plus a few other things), and is very necessary for the birds' health IMO.

* I only have the Kaytee High-Calcium Grit. Can I use that to mix with the crushed Egg shell ? Let me know. I have yet to offer them this High-Calcium Grit. Thanks *

I use a motar and pessil (sp?). I have control over how much to grind the egg shells.

I tried a coffee blade grinder ONCE. It quickly turned the egg shells into powder, and when I opened the grinder the dust from the powdered egg just came rolling out of the grinder. phew, what a mess.

If you use a blade grinder, pulse it, then open to check the shells, then pulse again then check. What you want to do is to get the shells small, but not into a powder.

I put the crushed egg shell onto or on the side of the chopped eggs. The birds need something from the egg, to be able to absorb the calcium from the egg shells.

My chopped egg is relatively dry. I cut the hard boiled egg in half then leave that in the fridge overnight, to draw out the moisture. Even so when I chop the eggs, in a mini food processor, I put a teaspoon of corn meal, to dry out the eggs even more.

I serve the egg with chopped veggies in the same dish.
It has been so long that I do not remember if I ever had trouble getting the birds to eat the egg.

Although some times, the breeding birds will change their diet. Some prefer seeds rather than egg. Then when the eggs hatch, start scarfing down the egg. Then a week or so later switch more to seeds, and less egg. So I just monitor how much egg they eat and adjust accordingly. I had a pair of fostering societies that I had to feed egg to 5x a day, as they wanted egg to feed to the chicks, not seeds.

Ok, I'm going to have to play around with this stuff....as I am a new Finch owner and not used to this type of food or feeding. I did offer
chopped hard-boiled egg on a plate on the floor of the cage and both
birds refused it. I had to contact the owner of the Bird store where I
bought them to find out what these finches were used to eating.
It appears that hard-boiled eggs were not really offered much as the
store did not have a way to prepare/cook hard-boiled eggs there.

JerseyGuy wrote:

Sally wrote: JerseyGuy Have you tried sprinkling some of their seed mix on top of the boiled egg? That may tempt them to try it. Another thing, sometimes mashed boiled egg is still too moist for some birds--add a little yellow corn meal to the mix to dry it out, see if they will try that.

You can add the egg shell to their seed mix, but a lot of it might be wasted. I have a cup of mineral mix in my cages at all times. I just leave it until it either needs replenishing or has poop in it. This mineral mix is mainly crushed oyster shell, charcoal, a bit of sea salt, and crushed egg shells (plus a few other things), and is very necessary for the birds' health IMO.

* I only have the Kaytee High-Calcium Grit. Can I use that to mix with the crushed Egg shell ? Let me know. I have yet to offer them this High-Calcium Grit. Thanks *

The only thing I don't like about that Kaytee grit is that the first ingredient listed is granite grit, an ingredient that I would not like/use for my birds. But you can definitely add egg shell to any mineral mix you offer. I usually put mineral mix in a cup, and then I top it off with crushed egg shell, the birds go for it.

JerseyGuy

Hi Patrick!

I boil my eggs, let them cool overnight in the fridge, and then chop them up four eggs at a time (shell and all) in a food processor. I put that in a mixer with a vitamin mixture and commercial dry egg food to help dry it all out. If I'm giving it to my insect eaters, I add blood worms and a nice insect mix. I also offer egg shell in my mineral mix.

I used to dry my egg shells out in the microwave, but I don't do that anymore.

To me, the whole process of owning and breeding birds is a big learning experience. I got into this about one and a half years ago, and it took me a while to accept the fact that there's a variety of different ways to do things. Now I've become much more flexible, and I like listening to everyone's ideas to see if it's something that will work better for me and my birds