Add here your chickens favourite treats, add some that you have discovered to be favoured by your chickens, and add creative ways to feed them to your chickens.
The treat list
- Thread starter Chick2chicken
- Start date
Junglefowlboss
Chirping
They loves scraps like vegetables and fruits. Dont give them apple seeds. Some are corn(of course), mango, clovers and they also love rice and milk. Watermelon, melon, sprouts, dandelions. The list goes on lets see what other interesting things chickens love.
Clark Fowl Fans
In the Brooder
- Sep 19, 2016
- 19
- 0
- 19
Our LOVE tomatoes, but I just read a WPR post that they shouldn't eat them? True or false. I'm thinking false or mine would be dead or sick by now.... 
Junglefowlboss
Chirping
Only the skin is bad. It contains persin which is toxic to them and can be fatal. The insides are fine though. So true and false
Clark Fowl Fans
In the Brooder
- Sep 19, 2016
- 19
- 0
- 19
Seriously people skin their tomatoes first? I've heard the greens are bad but not the skins. Pretty sure I'd have sick/dead chickens by now the way they raided the ones that fell off my plants last year....
Junglefowlboss
Chirping
Im just going by the information that I saw.
Junglefowlboss
Chirping
Maybe you have special chickens. Lol
Now the rumors have started. Once these things get started the genie can never be put back in the bottle. Now forever there will be some people that actually believe tomato skins are harmful.
I took this quite off of Wikipedia but an internet search will confirm it.
Persin is a fungicidal toxin present in the avocado. It is considered generally harmless to humans, but when consumed by domestic animals in large quantities it is dangerous.
Here is another link that talks about it.
http://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poison/avocado/
Avocado, not tomato. Persin is in an avocado. Persin is especially dangerous to birds, but persin is in avocadoes. That’s where the warning should be, avocado. Not tomato.
The fruit of tomatoes and peppers are great treats for chickens. Mine really love the ripe ones and often get the rejects from my garden. However, the tomato and pepper plants are dangerous if eaten in quantity. The leaves and stems contain an alkaloid that makes the green leaves taste bad and can cause problems, especially gastrointestinal problems. Chickens would have to eat a fair quantity of tomato leaves to cause harm and usually they won’t, they taste so bad. But occasionally you get a chicken that will, especially if tomato leaves are the only greens available to them. Tomatoes themselves are fine, ripe tomatoes better than green. But do not feed tomato plants to your chickens.
Practically anything you eat or you feed your chickens contains something that can harm you if eaten in large enough quantity. Different people and different animals can have allergies or be especially susceptible to certain things. But in general healthy people and healthy animals have to have a huge dosage of these things to produce any harmful effects.
Cabbage and such contains something that can harm your thyroid. A normal healthy person would need to eat 4 to 5 pounds a day every day for a few weeks to get enough to cause problems, but it can be serious. That substance builds up in the body. Cabbage is often listed as a great treat for chickens and it is. Some people often hang a head of cabbage in the coop or run as a special treat for chickens and to keep them from getting bored. I’m not at all afraid of feeding cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower leaves to my chickens. I do it every year when they are in season.
White potatoes contain a substance that can cause problems, but a reasonably healthy adult would need to eat over 50 pounds of white potatoes at one time to get enough to be dangerous. The liver is pretty good at cleaning that substance out of the body so it tends to not build up.
Apple seeds and most other fruit seeds contain cyanide as a protection against certain tiny insects. But the dosage is so small a chicken will not have any problems at all from swallowing several apple seeds. I toss apples and other fruits, seeds and all, to my chickens. I have some fruit trees in my run. They eat the fruits, seeds and all, without problems. Dosage, dosage, dosage. There is not enough cyanide in the seeds to cause a problem. If you make a lot of fruit jelly and have a huge pile of seeds left over you might not want to dump them where the chickens can get to them, that might be a reasonable precaution, but Mom never worried about that and she made a lot of apple and peach jelly. Our chickens never had problems from us dumping the seeds where they could get to them. I’ve found peach and plum pits in the gizzards of chickens I butcher, enough to convince me they eat them all the time. There are no ill effects. They don’t eat enough for it to be a problem, even if the ground under a tree is covered in fallen fruit.
White potatoes exposed to the sun will turn green and a poisonous substance, solanine, will build up in them. Green potatoes should not be eaten by you or your chickens. White potatoes are fine for you and your chickens, you or they cannot eat enough to cause harm, your stomach or their crop just isn’t that big. But if they have turned green, avoid them.
There are a few things you should avoid feeding your chickens, avocado, green potatoes and green potato skins, and dried beans are on my list. For most other things, just don’t give them huge quantities for days on end. Spread it out a little bit and they can handle it fine.
I took this quite off of Wikipedia but an internet search will confirm it.
Persin is a fungicidal toxin present in the avocado. It is considered generally harmless to humans, but when consumed by domestic animals in large quantities it is dangerous.
Here is another link that talks about it.
http://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poison/avocado/
Avocado, not tomato. Persin is in an avocado. Persin is especially dangerous to birds, but persin is in avocadoes. That’s where the warning should be, avocado. Not tomato.
The fruit of tomatoes and peppers are great treats for chickens. Mine really love the ripe ones and often get the rejects from my garden. However, the tomato and pepper plants are dangerous if eaten in quantity. The leaves and stems contain an alkaloid that makes the green leaves taste bad and can cause problems, especially gastrointestinal problems. Chickens would have to eat a fair quantity of tomato leaves to cause harm and usually they won’t, they taste so bad. But occasionally you get a chicken that will, especially if tomato leaves are the only greens available to them. Tomatoes themselves are fine, ripe tomatoes better than green. But do not feed tomato plants to your chickens.
Practically anything you eat or you feed your chickens contains something that can harm you if eaten in large enough quantity. Different people and different animals can have allergies or be especially susceptible to certain things. But in general healthy people and healthy animals have to have a huge dosage of these things to produce any harmful effects.
Cabbage and such contains something that can harm your thyroid. A normal healthy person would need to eat 4 to 5 pounds a day every day for a few weeks to get enough to cause problems, but it can be serious. That substance builds up in the body. Cabbage is often listed as a great treat for chickens and it is. Some people often hang a head of cabbage in the coop or run as a special treat for chickens and to keep them from getting bored. I’m not at all afraid of feeding cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower leaves to my chickens. I do it every year when they are in season.
White potatoes contain a substance that can cause problems, but a reasonably healthy adult would need to eat over 50 pounds of white potatoes at one time to get enough to be dangerous. The liver is pretty good at cleaning that substance out of the body so it tends to not build up.
Apple seeds and most other fruit seeds contain cyanide as a protection against certain tiny insects. But the dosage is so small a chicken will not have any problems at all from swallowing several apple seeds. I toss apples and other fruits, seeds and all, to my chickens. I have some fruit trees in my run. They eat the fruits, seeds and all, without problems. Dosage, dosage, dosage. There is not enough cyanide in the seeds to cause a problem. If you make a lot of fruit jelly and have a huge pile of seeds left over you might not want to dump them where the chickens can get to them, that might be a reasonable precaution, but Mom never worried about that and she made a lot of apple and peach jelly. Our chickens never had problems from us dumping the seeds where they could get to them. I’ve found peach and plum pits in the gizzards of chickens I butcher, enough to convince me they eat them all the time. There are no ill effects. They don’t eat enough for it to be a problem, even if the ground under a tree is covered in fallen fruit.
White potatoes exposed to the sun will turn green and a poisonous substance, solanine, will build up in them. Green potatoes should not be eaten by you or your chickens. White potatoes are fine for you and your chickens, you or they cannot eat enough to cause harm, your stomach or their crop just isn’t that big. But if they have turned green, avoid them.
There are a few things you should avoid feeding your chickens, avocado, green potatoes and green potato skins, and dried beans are on my list. For most other things, just don’t give them huge quantities for days on end. Spread it out a little bit and they can handle it fine.
RR, thanks for the voice of reason. IMO, if chickens eat it, it's ok. This statement, preceeded by my opinion that chickens confined to a run with very little green matter to eat WILL eat a toxic plant to the point of illness if that's all that's available to them. My birds, and others have also noted, seem to enjoy eating rhubarb leaves in the fall. There are lots of other greens available, but they will go to town on those rhubarb leaves. And we've all been told how deadly those rhubarb leaves are! My chickens did not get that memo.
I feed my chickens everything. I hate that chicken feed say's vegetarian. Who ever heard of a vegetarian chicken.
I feed turkey carcass's, left over steak, live mealworms, crickets, sorry to say chicken, yogurt,
Any kind of greens. I am s I feed make them do tricks.
I feed turkey carcass's, left over steak, live mealworms, crickets, sorry to say chicken, yogurt,
Any kind of greens. I am s I feed make them do tricks.
Similar threads
New posts New threads Active threads
-
Latest threads
-
-
young laying hen has lots of poop that is very white stuck to her vent feathers- Started by Featherhead777
- Replies: 0
-
-
Previously egg bound hen laying eggs with blood on shell- Started by Ajp23
- Replies: 1
-
-
-
Threads with more replies in the last 15 days
-
-
-
Checking-In On Peeps - Post Here To Say Hello!- Started by Nifty-Chicken
- Replies: 154
-
-
Can I get some help from someone with careless neighbours who own dogs.- Started by RiDaGeckoGuy
- Replies: 102
-
