Are mullein seeds safe for poultry?

[Mrs. Mucket]

We have tons of dried mullein stalks on our property, but the seeds are said to be toxic to humans. Some wild birds appear to be eating them. Does anyone let their chickens eat the dried seeds? If safe to eat, a stalk might keep the chickens busy and make them work for their snacks.

 

[Unswydd]

We have tons of dried mullein stalks on our property, but the seeds are said to be toxic to humans. Some wild birds appear to be eating them. Does anyone let their chickens eat the dried seeds? If safe to eat, a stalk might keep the chickens busy and make them work for their snacks.

I have this same question. Wondering if the chickens can eat the leaves. Maybe someone will see this again and have some information.

 

[Crazychickenmom75]

I have this same question. Wondering if the chickens can eat the leaves. Maybe someone will see this again and have some information.

I just ran across your questions because I also have the same question.. what I found on Google today is that mullien seeds can be toxic but the flowers and leaves ok.. google is very conflicting tho

 

[Angischickens01]

I have this same question. Wondering if the chickens can eat the leaves. Maybe someone will see this again and have some information.

Everything I have read says not to feed in large amounts. If your chickens free range they can eat in small amounts. It's best to let them forage what they want instead of giving them too much.

 

[Marnieking79]

I had some boiled melein leaves I was going to feed my chicks, but when I Google, it said they were toxic.
So they went into the compost

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Mullein and poultry is NOT a well studied subject.

Here is a study published at EFSA, made available by NIH on the use of Mullein tincture for all animals. The EU decided there wasn't enough data to declare it safe initially, and I don't believe that position has changed. But when the company proposing the tincture reapplied, they dropped the max inclusion rate from 50 g / kg to 50 mg / kg. 50 mg/kg is a TINY amount. Literally parts per billion.

I've not been able to find other research.

That's the state of the science.

Now I'll go out on a limb. Nobody eats mullein for its nutritional value. Instead, its famous for its "medicinal" properties. When a plant or herb is famed for medicine, not food, in a particular culture, that consistently suggests it contains one or more toxins which might possibly be beneficial in the correct dosage, but might also make you very sick, or worse. Pharmacology is the science of studying the effects of, and then applying, consistent dosage of a given chemical. Since you can't know the concentrations of those toxins from crop to prop, season to season, or even where in the plant they might be more (or less) concentrated, you can't have any confidence in your dosage.

In nature, the critters known to eat it (apart from grasshoppers, who may well be eating it to make themselves less palatable to birds) are deer, elk, and goats - whose digestion is nothing like chickens - and they ted to eat it only in winter when nothing else is available. Given alternative feed, mullein is "never grazed".

As such, using mullein as a feed additive is effectively the deliberate and knowing poisoning of your birds in hopes of beneficial medicinal outcomes. Not something I can recommend.