Treat or toxins!

[elaines03]

I'm a little confused after reading the list of chicken treats and then reading the list on toxic plants on the poultryhelp.com link. Cabbage and Kale are on the toxic list but the treat lists them as good. Also I have a"chickens" magazine that gives a list of herbs you can put in the nesting boxes and one was garlic but garlic is on the toxic list. Any advice from anyone?

Jan

 

[Ridgerunner]

If you read enough on the internet, you can get really confused. A lot of times, some people don’t understand what they are talking about in context. They just take something and run with it to reach ridiculous conclusions.

Practically any food you eat contains something that can harm you. That’s just a fact. You have to consider dosage. Cabbage, for example, contains a substance that can harm you, I think it affects the thyroid. But the dosage in cabbage is so low you would need to eat several pounds a day for several days or even weeks to eat enough of that substance to harm you. People that have thyroid problems may have a very low tolerance to cabbage, that would be up to their doctor. Chickens are much smaller than us so the amount required to harm them is less, but then they don’t eat as much at one time as we do. But for the vast majority of us or our chickens, we or they are just not going to eat enough cabbage to harm ourselves or them. You’d have to really try.

In general, one bite won’t kill them. It takes a certain dosage to have an effect. Sometimes the effect is cumulative, you have to eat a high level for a while for the effect to build up.

For some things you just can’t eat enough to get a toxic dose. The key is moderation. Feed a variety of things, not the same thing every day. It’s hard to get in trouble when you do that.

Another safeguard is that many “poisons” or things that are harmful don’t taste good. Green potatoes and green potato peels that have been exposed to the sun contain a substance that can harm you or chickens. They also taste quite bitter. They are not likely to want to eat something that tastes that bad. Again, one bite won’t kill them, but try to avoid offering green potato peelings.

Regular potato peelings are fine. They don’t contain that dangerous substance, yet you will see a lot of warnings about feeding them regular potato peelings. That’s another way bad information gets passed around on the internet. Somebody that read the warning against green potato peelings didn’t see the word green and posted against all potato peels.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Good info from Ridgerunner.
I have lots of things considered bad in the chicken's area. IMO, they don't get enough of any one thing to concern me.
The same would be true in the wild.
They're not like humans that will consume anything the FDA says is safe and has enough salt, sugar, fat and artificial flavor in it to make it taste good - even though it's harmful to our health.