Can chickens pass sour pie cherry pits with regularity.

[Al Capon]

Reason I ask is the cherry trees are in bloom again, won't be but a couple months till fruit will be dropping.

Last year I had 1 sick pullet. She was losing weight, watery poop, the works. I tried treating her for all the usual suspects. Took her to 2 vets, they tried an assortment of remedies and antibiotics, no help. I finally had to put her down.

Occasionally she'd poop out a cherry pit. Towards the end, she was getting rid of cherry pits 4-5 weeks after the last cherry was gone from the tree. There's no way she should have still had those pits in her system unless something else was amiss.

The other 7 pullets I had free-ranged the same acre. They went where she went, at the same food and probably grabbed the same amount of fallen cherries, however the other 7 showed no problems. So I'm just guessing that the sick pullet had some crop/gizzard/digestive system problems that she was probably hatched with. I don't think the cherry pits killed her, I think that was just a symptom of a bigger problem.

Also, I've heard the pits contain small amounts of cyanide. When she got rid of the pits, they were very clean, but unbroken. I don't know if a gizzard would break up pits, but hers didn't. They were 100% whole.

So, that brings me to my question, does anybody else have chickens roaming around a cherry orchard. What's your experience? Can they safely eat them or not?

I don't want to lose any more chickens, but it's gonna be a headache and almost impossible to fence off a bunch of orchard trees. I don't imagine our forefathers made any special concessions to chickens free ranging orchards 100 years ago, and they managed.

Thoughts?

 

[aart]

There's no way she should have still had those pits in her system unless something else was amiss.

Hmmm....only way to know that for sure would have been to open her up and inspect the gizzard and intestines.
It could have been something unrelated to the pits...or she could have gorged on them.
Slaughtered a hen once whose gizzard was chock full of granite grit,
why I don't offer it in a dish anymore.
Sorry, don't have any exact anecdotes about orchard foraging.

 

[Chick-N-Fun]

I am so sorry for your loss! I wish I could help....

 

[Al Capon]

It could have been something unrelated to the pits...or she could have gorged on them.
Slaughtered a hen once whose gizzard was chock full of granite grit,
why I don't offer it in a dish anymore.

She was showing signs of being sick a few weeks before the fruit hit the ground. I think the pits just focused my attention towards the digestive tract. I'm pretty sure she was messed up on the inside.

I don't see mine eating much grit, but they seem to eat a lot of oyster shell, along with their layer pellets. More than I'd thought would be necessary. Haven't had any problems yet, luckily.

375,000 members, you'd think there would be a few with cherry trees in the yard...

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think your first assessment is right, there was something wrong with her to start with. Your other chickens are right there with her and they don't have those issues. I was never lucky enough to get my cherry trees to bear when I was in Arkansas but my chickens had access to apples, pears, plums, grapes, and peaches, including the pits. More than once I found a plum pit in the gizzard of a chicken I butchered. They were in pretty good shape which makes me think the grit in their gizzard would grind them up pretty fast.

Are you familiar with hickory nuts? Ducks like to eat them, hickory nuts are important forage for wild ducks. I don't think those cherry pits are going to be any harder to grind up that those hickory nuts.

Yes, most fruit seeds contain cyanide. Did you ever swallow an apple seed when you were a kid. I did, more than once. Cyanide is poison, how could I be typing this, I must be dead. Dosage. There is enough cyanide to protect those seeds from a tiny insect eating them, not enough to kill me. Not enough to kill a healthy chicken even if they eat several.

It's just my opinion based on my observations of chickens foraging in orchards as a kid and as an adult, but I don't think those cherry pits were your problem.

 

[Al Capon]

Ha,..the cherries trees I've got came from my dad, who got them from an acquaintance 2-3 decades ago in Arkansas, go figure.

These are pie cherries so the pits are a lot smaller than the big Bing cherries you buy, not any bigger than a peanut, mostly smaller.

I've never butchered a chicken or looked at their innards, are the crop and gizzard designed to empty completely? Does everything cycle thru eventually, nothing stays around for long in health innards, hence the reason to constantly replenish grit?

Yeah, we have Hickory trees around here. I would have never guessed ducks eat Hickory nuts, those are sizeable. I know the wild turkeys around here clean up the acorns, they can't be much different from a chicken.

I think I'll roll the dice an see what happens, if they can eat rocks, they should be able to get rid of pits..

 

[aart]

are the crop and gizzard designed to empty completely?

Pretty much...unless it's something that can't be ground up in the gizzard, like plastic or metal.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I've never butchered a chicken or looked at their innards, are the crop and gizzard designed to empty completely? Does everything cycle thru eventually, nothing stays around for long in health innards, hence the reason to constantly replenish grit?

The stuff in the crop empties into the gizzard, eventually. Digestive juices mix with it in the crop to start the process but that's not much.

In the gizzard it should get ground down to sand size. The grit doesn't pass until it is ground into sand. A good chunk of granite might take a month to grind down, softer rock can disappear a lot faster.