Are corn cob leftovers ok for my girls?

[FiveHens]

You won't be able to recognize the corn cob by morning.

 

[swordgeek]

Totally picked clean, every time. I'm not such a huge fan of corn, so when I eat an ear, I always manage to save a little on the cob just for the birds (though they're still getting a lot off cobs that are human-cleaned). Whenever I go to BBQ at a friend's house, I collect everybody's cobs and take them home. At first they think I'm weird, but then they think it's cute that we take such good care of our birds. Around these parts, backyard chickens aren't a common thing! It's still considered quaint.

 

[kla37]

Great tip for a new kind of treat!

 

[noodleroo]

Mine love them too!

 

[Ohhhdear]

Quote:
Axshully, uncooked brown/yellow/red potato peels are fine. The majority of the potato's vitamins are in the peel, and unless you also give your chickens the water you boiled the peels in, you lose the vitamins. I feed my girls raw potato peels and they gobble them down in seconds.

However it's GREEN potato peels that are bad, for both chickens and people. Green skins indicate that potato has been overexposed to sunlight which produces a toxic chemical called solanin. In concentration, it's dangerous. This is the same chemical which is in other tomato-family plants like deadly nightshade, tomato, eggplant, potato, morning glory. It's the reason monarch butterflies caterpillars are colored like tomato hookworms which birds will not eat.

There are medical studies made which link solanin-poisoned potato skin consumption in Irish ancestry people to neural-tube defects such as spina bifida, hydroencephaly, anencephaly and microencephaly. The neural tube is the brain and spinal cord. Nothing to mess around with. These studies traced family histories of neural-tube defective children to the Irish Potato Famine and then to the United States. The Wikipedia article is dismissive about this link, but the medical studies I read when I miscarried my twins were very thorough. These brain/spinal cord defects run strongly in both my and my husband's families which are largely of Irish origin.

 

[alaskachick]

I buy fresh corn for my chickens as a treat... they love corn on the cob.

 

[clara rose]

I have been feeding my girls fresh sweet corn every day for the last 5 weeks, 32 hens and they get a dozen a day, my neighbor cant pick it all so i am giving to the pigs, and the chickens will fight the hogs for theirs too. so between the free ranging they do and the free choice feed they get and scraps to boot they are happy. 30 eggs a day i am having so much fun with these chickens i ordered 30 more chicks my wife thinks i am crazy