Households that compost kitchen scraps with worms typically use up a dozen or more eggs per week. It’s tempting to toss them right into the kitchen scrap bucket for composting. After all, eggshells are all-natural left-overs from food preparation. However, Uncle Jim has two suggestions for putting eggshells into your vermicomposting bin: crush them, and don’t over-do it!
Why Eggshells
There are several reasons to put eggshells in your worm bin. Eggshells provide calcium, which reduces acidity in the bin. This prevents high acid conditions that can harm your worms. Also, crushed eggshells provide grit to aid the worms’ digestion. And, it is believed that eggshells help worms in the reproductive process.
Crush the Eggshells
Eggshells are useful to vermicomposting bins because they help increase the pH of the entire bin contents to make it less acidic. This is not something the casual worm composting enthusiast needs to worry about too much. Our Red Wiggler composting worms are quite hearty and can survive without much attention. More serious hobbyists take the time to measure pH of the bin bedding. Throwing in a handful of crushed eggshells once in a while adds slow-release calcium, which helps keep the pH neutral.
The best technique for handling eggshells is to rinse them and let them air dry. After several dozen pile up, crush them with a mortar and pestle or any hard object. This should quickly result in powdered eggshells. Sprinkle them on top of your worm bin. You can choose to work them in to the bedding a bit.
Why bother crushing the eggshells? Whole eggshells:
- take a very long time to break down
- take up a lot of space
- prevent the worms from moving around freely in the bin
- cannot be bitten into by a worm – worms do not have teeth
Worms will swallow eggshell powder to add grit. Since Red Wigglers don’t have teeth, they need a bit of grit to help break down the food scraps. Eggshells are perfect for this.
Don’t Over-Do It
As with anything, there is the concept of “too much of a good thing.” Some worm lovers get overly enthusiastic with the idea of collecting, crushing and adding eggshells to their worm bin.
A household of 4 or more can easily go through 2 or 3 dozen eggs per week. Households that purchase eggs from the grocery store or farmer’s market can control how many eggs come in. Homesteaders and farms that have laying hens have fluctuating egg production and can end up with a bumper crop of eggshells.
That many eggshells is more than your worm bin can handle. You’ll probably need to discard the majority of your eggshells. We recommend you add maybe ½ cup of eggshells no more than once per month. Watch and see how long it takes for the little white or brown eggshell dots to disappear from your bin. Don’t add more eggshells until the last batch of eggshells is invisible.
In a healthy worm bin, your worms will have babies. You might notice tiny, brown round dots. These are the eggs. Soon they hatch into small worms that quickly grow full-sized. The vermicomposting bin is self-regulating, in that the population will expand to the capacity of the bin size, available food, temperature and conditions. Eggshells are believed to be helpful for worm reproduction. If you have a lot of worms in your bin, you can choose to remove some worms. Start a new bin, give them to a neighbor, or use them for fishing. Otherwise, just let the population regulate itself.
So, don’t go too crazy with eggshells in your worm bin! Help out your worms by saving and crushing some eggshells to make the bin acidity heathy, help them digest their food, and assist in making new worms.
Need any composting worms? Uncle Jim recommends Red Wigglers for composting, andSuper Reds for aeration & fertilizing in your lawn or garden.
14 thoughts on “Eggshells Help Your Worm Composting Bin”
I would like to but European night crawlers for my son. He does a lot of fishing and uses quite a lot of worms. I have a fair amount of top soil that i use for various yard work. If I add these worms to this,will I lose worms via migration down through the bottom of the pile????
Jim, you always come through when I have “any” questions. I’ve learned a lot through the years thank you and I salute!
How do you keep ant out of worm ned
The “Don’t Over-Do-It” section doesn’t mention why. What’s the negative affect of too much?
Great little composters! Thanks for the young ones, gives me a bit more time to enjoy them and get to know how much babies eat so when I start a new job I won’t overfeed. Great way to start off the first time. I appreciate it. Great purchase! I appreciate the enrichment. Take care.
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Can they be cooked eggshells?
Hi Jeanette,
Cooked egg shells are fine for the worm bin. Just remember to grind them up to help the worms break them down even faster!
Uncle Jim’s Team
Yes, please cite the results of adding too much ground egg shells. Thank you.
Hello Janet;
Eggshells or calcium rich materials, when added to the worm bin in large amounts will pass through the worms crop(where food is prepared in their body for digestion) in an acidic state and ferment in their gut. This creates ammonia and alcohol and will eventually rupture the worm from the inside. This creates a disease known as String of Pearls or sour crop. It is important to balance the browns, greens and calcium rich foods and to not overfeed the worms.
Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm
Can I leave the egg shell membrane intact, or should they be removed before feeding?
Hello Sarah;
Thank you for your question. You can leave the membrane, but it is very important to wash out the shells and remove any raw egg white or yoke. The raw eggs can contain salmonella and the worms can carry that disease. Clean and dry them and then crush them and give them to the worms.
Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm