Can dogs eat raw eggs?

The short answer

Crack a whole raw egg over the food. Yolk and white together, a few times a week for a medium dog, once or twice for a small one. Include the shell ground up if your dog does not eat bone; leave it out if it does. Use eggs with the British Lion mark, keep them in the fridge, and treat the raw egg like any other raw food for washing up.

How many raw eggs a dog can have

A medium hen's egg weighs about 55 g without the shell and carries around 75 calories, 6 g of protein and 5 g of fat. It is food, not a supplement, so it comes out of the daily amount rather than going on top. The feeding guide gives the daily grams by weight.

If the dog's stools loosen after an egg, it is usually the fat. Halve the amount or go to alternate days.

Biotin: the worry that mostly cancels itself out

Raw egg white contains avidin, a protein that binds biotin (vitamin B7) in the gut so it cannot be absorbed. That is the basis of the "raw eggs cause hair loss" claim. What the claim leaves out is that egg yolk is one of the richest sources of biotin in any food. A whole egg supplies more biotin than its white can bind. The deficiency has been demonstrated in dogs fed large quantities of egg white on its own, which no one does. Feed the whole egg and the arithmetic works in the dog's favour. If you only ever fed whites, it would not.

Salmonella and the Lion mark

Egg Salmonella in the UK was largely dealt with by the British Lion scheme, which vaccinates hens and sets standards for hygiene and traceability. In 2017 the Food Standards Agency revised its advice to say that eggs with the Lion mark are safe to eat raw or lightly cooked for everyone, including groups it had previously warned off. Around 90 percent of UK eggs are produced under the scheme, so a supermarket egg is almost always a Lion egg.

That does not make raw egg sterile. Shells can carry bacteria from the hen house, so wash your hands after handling them and wipe the shell if you are grinding it in. Eggs from a friend's hens, farm gate eggs without a stamp and imported eggs have no vaccination guarantee behind them. They are still low risk for the dog, but worth cooking if anyone vulnerable lives in the house.

Shell on or shell off?

Depends on where your dog's calcium comes from.

• Dog eats raw meaty bones or a complete raw food: leave the shell out. Calcium is already covered at 10 percent bone, and adding more pushes the diet towards too much, which shows as hard white stools.
• Dog is fed boneless raw or cooked meat: the shell is useful. Rinse, dry (an hour in a warm oven after cooking something else), grind to a powder in a coffee grinder or pestle and mortar. One medium shell gives about 2 g of calcium, which is roughly what 500 g of boneless meat needs to bring the calcium to phosphorus ratio back into range.
• Either way, grind it. Shell halves and large pieces can scratch the throat or gut. Powder cannot.

If you are feeding boneless and relying on eggshell for calcium, you are running the version of raw feeding that most often goes wrong on minerals. Weigh the meat and the shell, and read the ratio guide for what else needs covering.

Fitting eggs into a raw ratio

Count the egg against the muscle meat line. A 20 kg dog on 500 g a day has 400 g of muscle meat; on an egg day that becomes 345 g of meat plus one egg. In practice most feeders do not bother to reduce the meat for one egg a few times a week, and for a dog at a healthy weight that is fine. For a dog on a diet, count it. The calculator gives the muscle meat line for your dog's weight.

Cooked or raw?

Either works. Raw keeps the full biotin and avoids any butter or oil. A plain scrambled or boiled egg is just as useful nutritionally, with a small loss of some B vitamins, and is the right choice in a household with a baby, a pregnancy or someone immune compromised, or when the eggs are not Lion marked. Never add salt, butter, milk or seasoning.

Sources

• Food Standards Agency, advice on safe storage, handling and use of eggs, and its 2026 fact check on Salmonella and eggs, which restates the 2017 change for Lion and Laid in Britain eggs
• British Lion eggs, the Lion scheme and vaccination against Salmonella
• GOV.UK, raw pet food: handling and hygiene guidance