Can I give these herbs to my chickens?

[huntersmoon]

I have two baggies of leftover herbal tea (custom blend) - they have:

lemon balm
skullcap
lavender
rose hips
nettle
raspberry
oatsraw
fennel

I know the nettle and oatstraw are good for them, and assume the rose hips are okay. Does anyone know if the remaining ingredients are harmful?

Thanks
Shannon

 

[digitS']

Shannon, I like raspberry leaf tea. Rose hips are real nice. Nettle is okay but it tastes rather veggie-like - I like it as a vegetable. Fennel seed is tasty in various foods but the leaves are not a tea favorite. That's really true of lemon balm - not a favorite, tastes like Lemon Pledge smells!

Lavender is wonderful as a fragrance. Oat straw - well, I've fed that to livestock.

You can check on skullcap (and all the rest of them

) here: Alternative Medicine - University of Michigan

Steve

 

[CityChook]

I am unsure about the other herbs you mentioned, but I purposefully leave all the hips on my rose bushes (organic - no spray whatsoever) in the summer/fall for the wild birds in my yard and by Spring they are all gone. They seem to like them a lot!

 

[Pathfinders]

Bear in mind that some herbs, when given to chickens, will make the eggs taste like the herbs. This may or may not be what you want.

 

[digitS']

Yeah, keep that Lemon Pledge . . . I mean Lemon Balm . . . away from them!

Actually, they have better sense than to eat it in my yard

.

Steve

 

[cyrixlord]

my chickens leave the lemon balm alone though i use it in soup when I want to cheat and not harvest my lemon grass. I seep it in there and take it out after about 20 minutes.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

Lemon balm is a good anti-viral and I do use it for that. For tea, potpourri and just a wonderful sniff in the garden, you can't beat lemon verbena. Ahhh, heavenly...

 

[huntersmoon]

Thanks for all of the replies and for the resource link! The herbs were all chopped finely, so I could steep them, so I just dumped the contents in there and they picked what they wanted.

Thanks
Shannon