Am I really Truly Poisonous?

[Megan Amber]

No you didn't sound to me as cross, just curious. I should have put a LOL after the first sentence. The statement that "Its the dose that makes the poison" is very true. Some medicines can kill if used wrong. The lists would be more helpful if the listed the symptoms and the amounts needed to bring them on. For the most part a free ranging chicken won't have a chance to eat enough of any low dose poisonous plant to even bother it. I started to throw into my chickens lambs quarter out of my garden then I read a list with it on it. Well my chickens were still alive a doing well. So either the list was wrong or it is something that has to be very concentrated to make them sick. The list didn't say what it was of how much it would take.

I can actually answer the lambsquarter thing! Well, half way, lol. It is only after they have been through a frost that they become potentially poisonous, They begin to produce high amounts of nitrates. But I don't know how much it takes, as each plant builds up different amounts. They collect it. I find that annoying in lists as well.

 

[Megan Amber]

As stated earlier a lot of it is dose dependent. It would take a lot of potato peelings to make the hens sick.

As far as rice goes, have you every gone to a rice field and seen all the dead birds?

I agree, lol, that was the article I read that convinced me to try feeding them rice, it stated that if it was true there would not be such a problem in Indonesia with the black birds eating all the rice seed!

 

[Speceider]

one needs to keep in mind that different stages (seedling, plant, vegetation, seeds depending upon ripeness) are all factors...nightshade vegetation may be toxic, but birds are the main seed dispersers, so the fruits are not toxic. Also, fruits with sucrose as their main sugar are almost toxic to many bird species because they lack sucrose and cannot digest the sugars and struggle with dehydration to expel the sucrose. Lists tend to give an all or nothing picture and I am frustrated with them.

Clint

 

[donrae]

I feed my birds everything we don't eat. Rice, cooked or uncooked. Potato peelings. Avocado. Moldy bread. Meat, even *gasp* chicken! Foods that have been salted. Egg shells, just cracked and tossed in the run. No problems with egg eaters. I do despise those "treat charts' and lists of poisonous plants, one was going around saying clover was toxic to chickens!

 

[Doran5Family]

Mine eat what they want and don't what they don't. So I give them more of what they will and the rest goes in the compost pile that they scratch through anyway. Something will eat it, then the chickens will eat them

 

[Megan Amber]

I feed my birds everything we don't eat. Rice, cooked or uncooked. Potato peelings. Avocado. Moldy bread. Meat, even *gasp* chicken! Foods that have been salted. Egg shells, just cracked and tossed in the run. No problems with egg eaters. I do despise those "treat charts' and lists of poisonous plants, one was going around saying clover was toxic to chickens!

Haha, we give our's chicken soup sometimes, lol. Ooh, avocado, I have yet to brave enough to try that one, you give it to them whole?

 

[smudge]

LOL. I'm not feeding the chickens vinca, but we have enough of it in the yard that it's kind of an unavoidable eventuality that someone will eat it, and it's listed as a hallucigen... I wonder how you can tell than a chicken is hallucinating.

My 7 year old very primly told me this morning that I shouldn't be giving them whole kernels of corn off the cob because they couldn't digest it. That's what she was told at summer camp. (It was fresh corn, not dried corn.)

They'd rather jump up and try to eat wild blackberries anyhow.

 

[donrae]

Haha, we give our's chicken soup sometimes, lol. Ooh, avocado, I have yet to brave enough to try that one, you give it to them whole?

No, I'm in Oregon, avocados are special and for humans only. My birds get the peels and whatever meat I didn't scrape off. They don't eat the peels and ignore the pits, they do peck at the meat that's leftover and eat any guacamole that goes bad and gets tossed out there. I've heard from folks here that live in avocado country that birds eat the fallen fruits no problem.

 

[Megan Amber]

No, I'm in Oregon, avocados are special and for humans only. My birds get the peels and whatever meat I didn't scrape off. They don't eat the peels and ignore the pits, they do peck at the meat that's leftover and eat any guacamole that goes bad and gets tossed out there. I've heard from folks here that live in avocado country that birds eat the fallen fruits no problem.

Oh okay thanks for the info! Good to know, have leftover guac sometimes, maybe I'll try some on some of my least favorite chickens, LOL