Can chickens have red peppers?

[Egg_cited]

I have read that chickens can't taste bitter and that red peppers help from all sorts of parasites and that they keep away bell rodents. Some people said that their chickens even started laying better

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Yes they can. Will affect yolk color in sufficient quantity. Negligible affect on nutrition of the eggs.

Helps not at all with parasites. **May** help deter rodents from eating feed if its mixed in.
Metal storage containers work much better. Research re: laying is a bit inconclusive - but every reliable, scale study I've seen says it absolutely doesn't, and those who have the most financial incentive to make use of it if it did help (i.e. Tyson, etc) don't. That tells me that any effect is so tiny as to not be worth the cost or the effort - or they would be doing it already. Effort is negligible, they could have it added to the feed as part of the normal mix, so that's not why they avoid it. Cost? Bulk red pepper runs $650 to 800/ton SO that's probably not it either, if the difference in rate of lay was significant.

As always, don't believe everything you see on the internet, particularly re: chickens.

 

[EddieSalita]

Where I used to live the peacocks went out of their way to eat my hot chillies. The hotter the better. Scorpions and naga were their favourite. Those things were hospital hot. One bird would eat as many as they could in a sitting. Often wiping out several plants worth at once. So there is definitely merit to the rumour they don't even notice capsacins.
Peacocks being galliformes .....I figure chickens are much the same.

 

[5Australorpasaures]

Our past chickens ate Jalapenos, Habaneros, Thai Hots and I still had to put Tabasco on my eggs. Didn't affect the birds at all.

 

[Rurumo]

It's fun to experiment with red peppers and yolk color. Other things that "improve" yolk color are spirulina and turmeric, and of course, everyone knows about marigolds. In smaller amounts, red peppers will actually first make the yolks look more yellow, but as you increase the amount they will turn more red. Spirulina will actually make the yolks more red looking in smaller amounts-you don't need more than 3% of the diet to be either red pepper or spirulina to make very impressive looking red yolks. If you like your yolks more yellow than red, use a smaller amount of red pepper (like .5% of the diet) or try turmeric at at least .5% of the diet-here is a review of research on turmeric use in poultry.

I got 3rd place in a science fair as a kid with a yolk color project using spirulina-my Mom was so into using it for improving the color of her canaries and finches that I started feeding it to my chickens, which made her mad because it was expensive. Red pepper is one of my top 3 supplements for all birds, and it's great for poultry just for reducing the amount of salmonella they carry https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7980284/. If you are interested in some of the other benefits, here is an article that reviews some of the red pepper/capsaicin research in poultry-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579121007045.