Chicken Diet and Kid with Food Allergies

Call me paranoid, but I've yet to find a straight answer on this.

Our youngest has serious food allergies to peanuts, tree nuts and fish. Every once in awhile, the hens will get leftover treats that may have some nuts. I've also noticed a couple of the goofballs will eat acorns when they are free ranging (most don't, but 2 of the 10 will) and an acorn is technically a tree nut, too, according to our allergist. In fact, my son's last EPI-pen worthy incident was respiratory distress from breathing oak dust when we were blowing off the driveway.

So far we haven't had any issue, but I'd love to see concrete proof one way or another as to what happens if hens eat nuts. It complicates things that I have read that soy isoflavones do indeed show up in eggs from a hen's diet, and soy is also a legume that many people are also allergic to.

Mostly I err on the side of caution, but I also hate tossing food and the hens love table scraps. I have one child who has a bad habit of wasting granola bars that I don't find til they've been opened in the cabinet awhile, so I have a pretty steady supply. Not that I could possibly stop them from eating the acorns, either... crazy birds!

Does anyone have a good link or information on this? Thanks!

it all depends on how tight your chickens' guts are. Those large proteins are not supposed to pass the membrane and get in the bloodstream. But guts that have been compromised do leak and let all sorts of things into the bloodstream. Allergies such as your son's are also typically initiated by the same mechanism, plus a strong immune reaction to those things in the blood.