List of food NOT to feed chickens

[cavemanrich]

In regards to potatoes, I'm not saying feed them to your chickens, they should certainly be avoided as a rule of thumb... But I do believe that as far as the flesh goes (no the skin and buds) the toxicity is exaggerated quite a bit by many... If one was to believe they were as toxic as proclaimed there would almost certainly be piles of parking lot gulls and other birds all over the place from eating the copious amounts of french fries and potato chips that are tossed to them every day in some places...

White potatoes definitely not. Before I knew this, years ago I threw some white potatoes & peels in our
compost pile, which the chickens sometimes scratch around in. Shortly thereafter I had two hens sicken and die very quickly. I know they had both recently been in the compost pile
and I am sure they got hold of the white potatoes. .

Ours love watermelon...raw pumpkin and seeds...apples. Pretty much anything, lol.

if the potatoes start to sprout in compost pile they are not safe for chickens. I clean potatoes of buds and give to my chickens without any issues. the other thing that might have happened is that the potatoes peels were sitting on light and turned green. that is toxic too.
Here is my response to potatoes. Please note that the potatoes that may be DANGEROUS, are RAW POTATOES. When I was a lil snipe, we lived in a rural area and raised chickens to eat them. We also ate the eggs as well as sold some to pay our taxes. We never ate more than one chicken per week. Meat was a high commodity at that time and we did not have a large flock. Our source of feed was what was available. There was no processed feed in those days. My mom would boil a vat of potatoes, skins and all, and chop them up in a trough. tried to add some grain into mix, but not always available. The potatoes were the most common white ones. That is all they had to eat. Chickens obviously free ranged ALL DAY. Chickens ate the potatoes and trough was whistle clean in no time flat. This was a very long time ago. Our chickens did not die, EXCEPT THE ONE PER WEEK.

Quote:
Scrap produce and vegetables are not equivalent to cracked corn. Of course your chickens grew well.

 

[spoikey]

I fed them the grower twice a day. they also got cracked corn or scratch
in addition to all the produce I could get for them. Some days I didn't have the produce. They just loved cantalope. They would leave their grower for that. Read an article a while back that stated these birds will grow just fine on scratch. Next time I get meat chickens I will have two batches and do some experimenting.

 

[MeepBeep]

[COLOR=FF0000]Scrap produce and vegetables are not equivalent to cracked corn.[/COLOR]   Of course your chickens grew well. 

Very true, as I have said about 50% of my chickens diet is assorted fresh produce, vegetables and what not... The key here is 'assorted' and 'varied' vs a single food source like corn... No single grain is a balanced diet, corn like any single grain has a specific and limited nutritional profile, and lacks many nutrients that birds need to thrive and they will suffer on a corn only diet just like they would suffer on a spinach only diet...

Also when it comes to most commercial feeds that already have essentially the maximum amount of corn allowed to maintain a balanced diet, so adding more just dilutes things...

 

[MeepBeep]

Read an article a while back that stated these birds will grow just fine on scratch.

In short they won't grow 'just fine' they might survive but that doesn't mean they will thrive or grow properly on scratch, as scratch has no where near the needed protein levels nor the proper balance of amino acids and other nutrients...

Millions if not billions of dollars have been spent on studying poultry dietary needs over the last hundred years so that optimized feeds can be created and produced to literally pinch pennies out of the cost of raising chickens... If scratch was sufficient you would see every poultry operation worldwide using it and saving billions, but they don't and that says it all...

 

[spoikey]

It's a wonder how chickens and other animals ever survived without our help.

 

[cavemanrich]

It's a wonder how chickens and other animals ever survived without our help.

It is not really a wonder. Our pioneers in early days would just let loose a bunch of bantam chickens into the adjacent forest near their homesteads. ( Bantams can survive free range only). Whenever they could, they would catch them and eat them. They would keep resupplying the forest, kind of similar to what we do with fish from hatcheries released into lakes and rivers. (restocking) . The chickens obviously were on the small size, but that was better than no chickens at all. Jungle fowl chickens are the original chickens from which all others were developed. I had one a while back, She was an excellent flyer, medium size, and not very meaty. Could survive in the wild with no problem. The later developed large fowl breeds are huge chickens that need to be fed by Keepers/Farmers. They would not survive in the wild on their own.

 

[MeepBeep]

It's a wonder how chickens and other animals ever survived without our help.

It's not a wonder... There are a plethora of differences making it a night and day comparison...

• Today's 'chickens' are truly domestic fowl, most breeds are far removed from their wild counterparts and lost a vast degree of their ability and skills to survive on their own...
• Today's world 'environment' overall is truly different from it was even 100 years ago...
• There are few 'wild' areas left in the world similar to the natural habitat of chickens...
• Humans have spent the last 100 years dumping chemicals, toxins, pesticides, herbicides as well as destroying natural flora and disturbing the natural fauna...
• Chickens are native to 'jungle' regions and 'tropical' regions that were ripe with food and cover and in many cases void of many predators or at least limited predator...
• Humans have pretty much upset the natural balance of nature worldwide, causing even many still very wild creatures to cling to survival or face exctinction...
• We expect our chickens to produce 100s more eggs then they would have in the wild...
• We expect our chickens to grow bigger than they would in the wild..
• We expect our chickens to have low mortality rates and high hatch rates, contrary to the norm in the wild...

The list could really go on and on, domestication removes survival skills, just look at humans as a example, how long and how healthy do you think most humans would be if they were dumped in the wild with nothing and made to fend totally for themselves? And even those that do survive would arguably not survive as long or have the same quality of life, a simply cut, bad tooth or common could kill you in short in the wild...

 

[bullets]

Curiosity question...if feathers are 85% protein, what would one think about collecting all the feathers from molts, processed chickens, etc and grinding them up to feed back to the chickens? I have no idea if this idea is good or bad. Just a thought that came up while reading through this thread.

 

[MeepBeep]

Curiosity question...if feathers are 85% protein, what would one think about collecting all the feathers from molts, processed chickens, etc and grinding them up to feed back to the chickens? I have no idea if this idea is good or bad. Just a thought that came up while reading through this thread.

Feather meal is used as a feed supplement, but it needs to be hydrolyzed (pressure cooked, dried and ground or have enzymes added) before it's a usable dietary protein as a vast majority of the protein (keratin) is not digestible without being hydrolyzed or converted...

From what I have read only about 5% of the feathers 80-90% overall protein is digestible in raw form without being processed first...

So if you want to spend the time pressure cooking it for several hours, drying and grinding it could be a decent source of protein, but probably not too profitable in the end vs just buying another already digestible protein source...

 

[spoikey]

double post.