Egg shells

[Angi]

I went to the SDTTS meeting last night and they said egg shells were a good natural source of calcium. Thoughts? Is it better than cuttle bone and the stuff I buy and sprinkle on their food?

 

[Angi]

Come on people, I need an answer. My mom and I are disagreeing on this.

 

[Thalatte]

They do have a lot of calcium in them and are used in a lot of animal diets. I don't like using them for herbivorous animals as I think they would have animal protein as well. But I could be completely wrong. My boxie beaker gets quail egg every once in awhile.

 

[Creedence]

I've heard of people grinding it up into a powder and using that, but I've never personally done it.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

I provide a cuttlebone in the pens, occasionally grind up cuttlebone to sprinkle on the food and twice have ground up natural egg shells from my friends free roaming chickens and put that on some food. My Tort did eat the egg shells. I have seen no harm or damage.
I personally wouldn't use a store bought chicken egg based on what i know of how those chickens are kept compared to how my friends are kept

 

[BowandWalter]

My friends and I had a picnic with my little niece, and Walter, while being attended by dolls, Walter managed to snag some quail egg shells from our lunch and seemed exceptionally happy scarfing them down, it doesn't seem to have done him any harm. I read that other things have higher calcium levels and are healthier, I looked into it after to see if it would be a good supplement because he seemed to like them so much, he gets them as a very rare treat.

 

[arotester]

It's a good calcium supplement for the tort and i don't think there's anything wrong in giving egg shell even to herbivorous torts,may be you should save some shells after using egg and crush them if you like for the comfort of using.

 

[Yellow Turtle]

I think egg shells are okay too, but my question will be, how fast torts intestine can process the shells before they get out of the body? I fed it once before and I saw after two days the poop contained crushed shells.

So for now I choose to use powder calcium, but I think if you are willing to grind the shells, then it should be absorbed as fast as powder calcium.