# Whole egg every morning?



## Steph (Jun 24, 2011)

I used to feed 2 meals a day, but have switched to 1 big meal in the evening. However, my dogs were used to eating in the morning and although I';m sure they could get used to it, I decided to give them 1 raw egg with shell in the morning. Is this ok to do? They are cage free vegetarian brown eggs. My female pit will eat the eggshell along with my OEB's eggshell because he doesn't like the shell. Any reasons why I should not do this?


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

No problem at all. If the dog eats the shell, that's fine. If not, no big deal. Some do, some don't.

I've got to say something here though for future readers who might land on this post looking for information on eggs. There are a lot of misconceptions about eggs, mostly stuff perpetuated by the egg industry with help from Federal regulators.

First, the color of the shell is completely irrelevant. White, brown, blue, spotted, green, whatever. The color of the shell has nothing to do with the nutritional content. Brown eggs cost a premium so egg producers try to make them sound important. They aren't. 

Second, "cage free" sounds great but means almost nothing. In order to state it on the package, all an egg producer has to do is allow the hens to leave their indoor pen and go outdoors for a specific amount of time every day. Basically, the farmer has to open the door. The problem is, most hens do not venture out. They are highly social creatures and tend to stick together and have little interest in going outside. In many cases too, "outside" is a tiny patch of dirt with no redeeming qualities to a chicken, so they have little incentive to venture out.

Third, vegetarian feed sounds good to those who have been conditioned to fear meat and all of the "harmful affects" raising meat has on our environment. The problem is, it's just a marketing gimmick. Chickens are actually omnivores. They make the most nutritious eggs (and meat) when they can get outside and eat grass and insects, their natural food. This is where pasturing comes in. Pastured chickens are not only allowed to go outdoors, they are forced to for a certain amount of time every day, so they can scratch in a pasture and eat grass, bugs, seeds, etc. "Free range" and "pastured" are very different things as far as packaging is concerned even though they sound and awful lot alike.

The point here is, eggs are great for your dogs, but unless they are from pastured hens, or at the very least, from hens that are fed flax seed as part of their diet, they contain a high amount of Omega-6 compared to Omega-3, just like all the grain fed meat we typically buy (farmed fish included). Therefore, the same rule about supplementing with some sort of good Omega-3 source applies when you feed common eggs.

Regardless, they are an excellent source of protein and most dogs like them.


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## Steph (Jun 24, 2011)

Thanks for the reply.


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## lmnoconnor (Sep 12, 2011)

Very helpful post, thank you both for the question and the response. Me and the hubby were just talking about this yesterday!


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## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

As soon as our hens start laying eggs our dogs will get fresh ones everyday.


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## Rodeo (Sep 11, 2011)

I have five laying hens, very spoiled hens... so my family- dogs included- get plenty of fresh eggs


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

Y'all with hens are making me jealous. I can't get pastured eggs around here for less than $7.00/dozen!


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## jdatwood (Apr 13, 2009)

JayJayisme said:


> Y'all with hens are making me jealous. I can't get pastured eggs around here for less than $7.00/dozen!


Figure out how I can ship you some and you'll have plenty of farm fresh eggs :biggrin:


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## SilverBeat (Jan 16, 2011)

jdatwood said:


> Figure out how I can ship you some and you'll have plenty of farm fresh eggs :biggrin:


Ship them the day they're laid... They'll stay good for 3-4 days.

Eggs will last 5 months in the fridge, too [if you refrigerate them within a day or two of being laid.]


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## Rodeo (Sep 11, 2011)

SilverBeat said:


> Ship them the day they're laid... They'll stay good for 3-4 days.
> 
> Eggs will last 5 months in the fridge, too [if you refrigerate them within a day or two of being laid.]


We never refrigerate ours. They are still good a week or so later... they usually get eaten before then though.


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

jdatwood said:


> Figure out how I can ship you some and you'll have plenty of farm fresh eggs :biggrin:


Don't screw with me JD...my wife works for FedEx! :biggrin1:


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## luvMyBRT (Mar 8, 2010)

Eggs are Duncan's main protein source because they are purine free. He eats more than one a day and has done great. We love eggs at our house. :tongue:


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## jdatwood (Apr 13, 2009)

SilverBeat said:


> Ship them the day they're laid... They'll stay good for 3-4 days.
> 
> Eggs will last 5 months in the fridge, too [if you refrigerate them within a day or two of being laid.]


If you don't wash them when you gather them they don't need to be refrigerated at all.... They'll last months as long as you don't wash them off.



JayJayisme said:


> Don't screw with me JD...my wife works for FedEx! :biggrin1:


You act like I'm joking... :biggrin: I'd happily send you some if we could get them to you unbroken and cheaply (once ours start laying of course)


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## hmbutler (Aug 4, 2011)

jdatwood said:


> If you don't wash them when you gather them they don't need to be refrigerated at all.... They'll last months as long as you don't wash them off.


Why is that? 

I should invest in some chickens... though they wont have much room to graze, and Duke will probably eat them alive :yuck:


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## jdatwood (Apr 13, 2009)

hmbutler said:


> Why is that?


Let's just say that eggs come from the source with a "protective coating" on them :wink: Washing them removes this and allows air to penetrate the egg which eventually makes it go bad.

Here's an interesting read
Non-Refrigerated Egg Storage


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## Love my lab (Dec 9, 2010)

I had no idea how much pasture raised eggs were....wow I had got them for a steal when a friend of mine had hens and they ran free all day.....she housed them at night. She only charged me 2 bucks a dozen. Sadley she split from her b/f and there goes the egg fortune


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## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

How many chickens do you have, Jon? Don't they just lay one egg a day or is that wrong?


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## naturalfeddogs (Jan 6, 2011)

They do lay one a day on average, but do sometimes miss a day. They lay according to the length of daylight. So summer months they lay most every day. When the days get shorter they will slow and even stop laying unless you put a light in the coop to fool their bodies into thinking its still laying season and you will get eggs all winter. We just gave away most of our hens, but we had thirteen and more eggs all year than you could imagine!


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## jdatwood (Apr 13, 2009)

RawFedDogs said:


> How many chickens do you have, Jon? Don't they just lay one egg a day or is that wrong?


We have 29 total. 2 are definitely roosters with ~2 others we think might be. 

It takes ~26 hours to produce an egg so it's just under 1 egg a day.

Like Jenny said you can keep the egg production going all winter if you simply give them a day & night light cycle :wink:


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

jdatwood said:


> You act like I'm joking... :biggrin: I'd happily send you some if we could get them to you unbroken and cheaply (once ours start laying of course)


Jon,

That is very kind of you. Really. 

I'll tell you what, once your hens start laying, and you have an idea of their yield, and your needs, and should you happen to have eggs you don't know what to do with, send me a PM and I'll see if my FedEx connection can somehow be leveraged here to make it cheap and easy for everyone involved. I'm going to leave the ball in your court though because there are still a lot of variables, and chickens can be fickle creatures. If it's too hot, or too cold, or too sunny, or too dark, you aren't going to see a lot of eggs. Sometimes they will squabble and fight, and peck each other to death. They can be strange creatures to deal with. I'm sure you know all this, and have done everything necessary to provide an ideal environment for egg production, but I don't want you to...er...count your chickens before they've hatched. Sorry, just had to throw that one in. :biggrin:

Anyway, I hope everything goes as planned and you do somehow end up with a surplus of eggs. If so, I'll try to figure out a efficient way to do this, and something that makes it worth your while. We eat a lot of eggs around here, and I can't even afford all pastured eggs at this point. Hell, I eat at least four, and sometimes six a day. My kids eat at least two per day. The wife, sometimes one or two. And then there's the dogs, who get them occasionally. As you can imagine, we'd go broke if all of these were pastured eggs at 7 or 8 bucks a dozen, the going rate around here.

Anyway, let me know how it goes and we'll cross the bridge when we come to it.

Thanks again!

Jay


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## jdatwood (Apr 13, 2009)

Sounds like a plan dude. With ~25+ hens laying we should end up with a LOT of eggs every week :wink:


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## swolek (Mar 31, 2011)

All of this talk about eggs makes me thankful that today I simply walked to the farmer's market and got cheap, local, organic eggs that had been picked that morning . From a farm I've been to and have seen chickens running around getting to live like chickens.

I actually want to raise chickens badly but they're illegal here. I'm thinking of raising quail because no one would notice, ha.

As for the dogs, they get one or two eggs a week. Bambi won't eat hers anymore, though, I think it's the texture. She gets scrambled eggs if there's extra, ha.


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## hmbutler (Aug 4, 2011)

I'm gonna have to check our farmers market for eggs actually, I spent about 15 minutes in the supermarket yesterday carefully reading the pack of all the different eggs - could only find one lot that said the chickens have free roam of a pasture, but even that said grain-fed. Actually there is an old man and woman who sell fresh eggs out of van on the road in to town, they advertise as free range eggs, I'll have to go ask them some more details :thumb:


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## Herzo (Feb 5, 2011)

I'm lucky since this is a ranching community I can get them at the grocery store. Ranchers and those with small places like us raise eggs and the store sell's them. I would like to have our own but since we are still building our house I can't get my husband to build me a chicken coup. 

Jon my neighbor swore if you fed 2nd cutting hay to your chickens in the winter it would help with them laying eggs. They have had chickens for years, you might give it a try. Maybe you could find a bale at the feed store, they sell bales of hay around here anyway.


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