Black beans in gamebird feed?

[Sir Sacabambaspis]

I just read that raw black beans are highly toxic for chickens and pheasants, but I've been feeding my chickens and pheasants a home made blend of feed made of 60% gamebird feed and 40% high quality pigeon feed for months. The overall blend has roughly 10% black beans followed by about 10% sunflower seeds, and about 20% whole green peas to name a few throughout the blend. I've watched my birds eat the black beans over all these months and have seen no problems, in fact, I've actually seen an increase in health from my birds ever since I stopped feeding them later pellets and switched to this blend... But like... How have the black beans have zero effect on my birds???? Should I be worried???? I do see a very small amount of black beans at the bottom is the feeder when they're out followed by the occasional extra large sunflower seed or two... So may they're just not eating the majority of the beans? I've still seen them eat the beans with my own eyes though so surely they'd have some sort of illness, right???

 

[debid]

If the bird cannot identify which food caused their digestive distress, they will not know which thing to avoid. It isn't specific to black beans, though. ALL beans should be cooked before feeding both because that deactivates the lectin that causes the problem and it makes the nutrients more bioavailable. If you want to use beans as part of their feed, maybe batch cook and then freeze them in portions so they can eat them safely and get all the nutrients from them without you preparing beans every day? Alternatively, you could cook enough to destroy the toxin and then dry them again...