The treat list

Ridgerunner said:

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.

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