Can chickens safely eat tomatoes and lettuce?

[chickengeorgeto]

No, chickens cannot safely eat lettuce and tomatoes at my house. I get very angry at them when they raid my garden and something violent if not fatal is likely to happen to any hen or rooster who makes a habit of eating MY 'maters'.

In fact one reason that poultry keeping for food and profit has spread so widely is because no matter where humans take up residence, chickens can eat the flora and fauna naturally found there.

 

[SueT]

My girls inadvertently planted a tomato plant in their run. They fertilized it, they kept the bugs off it. It got huge. They are now enjoying harvesting their tomatoes and resting in the shade underneath.

 

[GroovyFarmer]

My girls inadvertently planted a tomato plant in their run.

Oh wow! How did they manage that?

 

[chickens really]

Do you peel the cucumber before feeding it to your chickens?

No...They eat the whole thing..

 

[tmarsh83]

Aside from frozen cucumbers, and watermelon I don't think there is anything mine go more crazy than tomatoes.

On salsa/sauce making days when I have the guts from the food mill you'd think they were in heaven.

 

[SueT]

Oh wow! How did they manage that?

They ate tomatoes and pooped in their run I guess, lol. Now how they managed not to trample it I don't know. Maybe lots of seedlings came up and this was the only survivor.

 

[Jojoand chicks]

How soon to feed babies tomato i started late on things with my older babies want to be on scedule this time as yhey grow all my older ones learned vrry very quickly

 

[Henmaster3000]

For cucumbers, what I like to do is slice them in half down the long side and let my chickens pick at it.

I do the same. Slice them lengthwise and let them clean it out leaving a shell of the skin.

 

[Chicklover1999]

Howdy GroovyFarmer

My bantam girls love tomato and lettuce.

I believe the “big no-no” with tomatoes is not the tomato themselves but the leaves of the plant, being members of the nightshade family. However, I have read heaps of posts from people whose chickens also eat the tomato plants.

The issue with lettuce is apparently that it is not a very nutritious food.

In our hot summers the gals love their lettuce, tomato and watermelon which aid with keeping them hydrated.

My bantams also love tomato’s!!!!

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Thanks for all the responses everyone! They sure made me feel a whole lot better about feeding that stuff to my chickens. I thought I had been poisoning my flock all this time! What a relief!

If half the stuff that was “poisonous to chickens” was actually poisonous to chickens, chickens wound be extinct.