How Much Egg Should I Feed?

Yes eggs are good for their coat. I feed 2-3 a week some feed more but it's up to you. You can grind up the shells too and give to them also if you choose.

Two to three times a week with the shell - just whirl it in the blender.  Look for humanely grown, farm fresh if possible where you are!  I get my chickie eggs from my vet, when her hens are laying - same price as the stores and sometimes cheaper.

I didnt know the eggshells were also a good source for them, and to think I have been throwing them out! I also didn#%92t think much on fresh eggs vs store bought eggs. Luckily my great grandmother has a ton of chickens, and I think she will give me 2 or 3. She hates to part with ANYTHING she has but I really don#%92t think she can eat 15-20 eggs a day!
 
Lizzie seems to love the egg, I am going to try some cottage cheese and some yogurt, ive never met a dog that turns down yogurt.
 
Dumb Question: What good does the cottage cheese/yogurt do? LOL I know they are good for her but don#%92t exactly know why, I just like to give her a variation of things since plain kibble gets a bit boring IMO. I don#%92t give her much canned because she doesn#%92t tolerate it well so I have to look for alternatives.

Bubblegum has gotten an egg on her kibble every morning from the day that I got her,,a year and a half ago. Ollie, my sons Dane gets a raw egg everyday for probably 4 years.
Only thing I do differently now is I seperate the egg white from the yolk and just give her the yolk, except for about once a week or so,,meanwhile when I seperate them I keep the whites in a plastic container and when I have about 5 days worth, I scramble the whites with no seasoning or oil,,,and give her that each morning with the raw yolk.  There is question about the raw white binding biotin in the body, and it is believed that there is enough biotin in the yolk to make up for it. However according to the Mercola website,,there might not be enough biotin in the yolk so I cook the whites seperately for MOST days. But both Danes DO get an egg a day!

now as always, Ican be wrong but I learned and followed the axiom that dogs cannot digest the white of the egg...They can digest the raw yolk but they get no benefit from the white unless it is cooked enough to break the albumin molecules...correct me if new info is out

Here's from the vets and biologists I know who feed homeade or supplement with whole foods:  Egg white contains avidin, which binds with biotin and makes it unavailable to your dog (or cat).  Egg white must therefore never be fed alone unless cooked to the opaque stage, which breaks down avidin.  Feeding it together with the rest of the egg is fine, however, because the yoke contains much more biotin than the avidin can bind.  Ie, the yolk's biotin will bind all the avidin and still have more than enough for the dog's needs.   Even without taking into account any biotin also contained in the dog's other rations.

Show breeders have been using raw egg for generations to put an extra deep glow in the  coat of long coated breeds and a sparkle in the eye of any dog, whether for show or work.  The original Come Home Lassie, set in the Borders and Scotland in the 30s, describes this in a couple different places.  Raw egg and warm thinned milk for a sick dog, and egg two to three times a week to gear up for a show.  [sm=wink2.gif] 

Old shepherds I've talked to, also describe the value of raw egg as a cheap source of supplemental protein for hunting and working dogs.  Fish, egg, oat or barley meal, and raw butchers' bones was the traditional diet of the UK shepherd's dogs, and I've had excellent results reproducing it with some additional input from friends in animal medicine and science.

What about feeding only the yolk... on occasion?  For example, if I am cooking something that calls for an egg white only... can I give Zoe the yolk?  This would be rare but last time it happened I wasn't sure so I didn't give it to her.

yolk is fine unless there is an egg allergy but you would have known that real quick, and Brookcove...thanks for the up date....

. can I give Zoe the yolk?

Yep,you can give just the yolk.

My dogs get a whole egg every second day,they love them! They have very shiny coats which leads me to believe they are getting enough biotin out of the eggs.

Lizziecollie if your going to feed yogurt,make sure and get the stuff with live cultures and avoid added sugar or sweetners.Live culture yogurt provides a thinned out version of probiotics.

I give Xerxes at least one to two eggs a week.  I know some PH people that just put the whole egg into the bowl, not broken.  I generally leave a few of the shells in the bowl too.  Not the whole thing.  I'm a nervous nelly when it comes to leaving too many shell fragments in the bowl. 

I love the sleek look it gives his fur and the way he really digs in.

I never thought about why eggs give a nice coat, until just now.

Biotin is a b vitamin, and is typically used for hair and nail growth.

Wow, I'm dense, sometimes[]

I fed Bubblegum whole raw eggs (and Ollie also) until I read this article. This is from Dr. Mercola website. He previously had recommended eating whole raw egg (this is for humans) because of exactly what brookcove states. However, this link is an update from 2005. IT states that :

However, recently a subscriber, Dr. Sharma, PhD, who is a biochemist with Bayer, contacted me about this issue. His investigation into the matter revealed that there is not enough biotin in an egg yolk to bind to all the avidin present in the raw whites. He found that 5.7 grams of biotin are required to neutralize all the avidin found in the raw whites of an average-sized egg. There are only about 25 micrograms -- or 25 millionths of a gram -- of biotin in an average egg yolk.

  He now recommends to NOT feed raw egg white as much, or to follow precautions.  Here is the link to this article.
[linkhttp://www.mercola.com/2005/feb/9/raw_eggs.htm]http://www.mercola.com/2005/feb/9/raw_eggs.htm[/link]
 
As far as allergy to egg,,,I have read often that allergy to eggs are most often found with cooked eggs, and rarely do raw eggs cause allergy problems.

So is the general concensus (sp) that its better to give only the yolk most of the time, and a whole less often?

I find it very hard to believe that generations of breeders and dog owners have been wrong about the benefits of raw egg.  I'm going to do some more nosing around . . .erhaps modern factory-farm-produced eggs are unnaturally low in biotin - I know my ducks, who ingest huge levels of biotin from their natural environment, have eggs much higher in biotin than chicken eggs.