All I can say is "GROSS!!"

[Alabama_boy]

Quote:
How interesting. Did he ever happen to explain his reasoning behind this?

He said he had lost chicks that had gotton maggots
before. I just love to know if you lose any of yours.

 

[MissPrissy]

Quote:
How interesting. Did he ever happen to explain his reasoning behind this?

He said he had lost chicks that had gotton maggots
before. I just love to know if you lose any of yours.

Chickens eat maggots all the time. Perhaps your friend meant his chicken 'had' maggots and died - meaning the maggots were feeding on the chicken and not the other way around. It would be called fly strike.

Meal worms are just big maggots too except from a beatle.

No difference.

 

[riderbecky]

That's what I'm thinking...That your friends chickens had injuries that got infected with the maggots which killed them...not that eating maggots killed the chickens.

dlhunicorn could extoll(sp?) us on the dangers of allowing maggots to remain in wounds.

 

[Davaroo]

Quote:
I don't see how that could be any worse than them pecking and scratching around in their own poop, honestly. They eat nastier stuff that we'd like to give them credit for. I'm just imagining a book titled "The Secret Life of Chickens" and the chapter titled "Tasty Tidbits Your Owner Never Knows About".

Yeah, well, um er, - you guys are right. I never thought beyond the "Oooooo, gross!" part.

 

[Eric91780]

We feed our dog whole pieces of raw meat out in the yard. What she doesnt eat that day the flies will lay eggs on it and then we get maggots. My chickens love to eat the maggots and pick at the raw meat. Nothing goes to waste here.

 

[chickygirl2]

Won't maggots give them tapeworms? :|

 

[MissPrissy]

No, they won't. Big misconception.

Some people will mistake maggots in the stool for tapeworms. Maggots are not seen in freshly passed stool and are not flat.

http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_tapeworm.html

One thing that some people confuse with maggots are tapeworms. Tapeworms are small, white worms that you can see on fresh feces, and sometimes crawling around the fur around the anus. The tapeworms are smooth, while maggots have a more rough appearance. Tapeworms move slow, while maggots tend to move very fast.​

 

[Wynette]

Just wanted to say WELCOME, Eric91780!!!

 

[warcard]

Well my DH told me that the maggots would eat themselves out of the crop killing the bird. Feel free to correct him

 

[Eric91780]

Thank you Wynette!

This seems to be a natural diet for chickens. From what I have read about chickens is that they came from the jungle.

So we try to imagine how they would be living in the wild. Also thinking about what they would be eating and how they would get it. Small things like lizards and bugs they could catch and eat themselves. Other sources of meat would be from other animals left over meals crawling with maggots, beatles, and stuff like that. Also the occasional dead fish they may find on the bank of a river.

We occasionally feed our chickens left over raw salmon, hamburger, or whatever my dog doesn't finish eating. We mainly let them free range in the front yard or in the garden in the back. I give them a mix of whole grains in the morning(not ground up processed stuff) and scraps from our kitchen.

We also apply this to our lives as well. Thinking about a more natural and simple lifestyle and diet. Think preindustrial revolution times.