Can my chickens eat this cooked chicken carcass?

[K0k0shka]

It would be really convenient if they would consume a whole undressed dispatched commrad. You could just knock an unwanted chicken in the head and toss it back in the pen to recoup some of the feed investment. Unfortunately, it doesn't work and chickens will, all of a sudden, develop a moral code of ethics when it is one of their own.

Pluck it first and watch what happens.

 

[K0k0shka]

I have this chicken carcass from the store and I really want to give it to my chickens but I’m just worried about the bones. I read a different post saying they did this and a chicken died from getting a bone stuck in her crop. Thoughts?
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I would imagine the most dangerous bone (for any animal eating a chicken carcass, including cats and dogs) is the fibula - that thin, pointy bone alongside the drumstick. If you took those out, the rest should be fine.

 

[Shabby Chic-Hens]

you can give it to them. it's fine, just pick out the bones.
it is cannibalisim though!

 

[K0k0shka]

it is cannibalisim though!

Chickens don't care. They are natural cannibals.

 

[Shabby Chic-Hens]

Chickens don't care. They are natural cannibals.

I know. I was joking

 

[K0k0shka]

I know. I was joking

Ah, alright. Hard to decipher that in writing. And there are lots of people out there legit shocked by the concept

 

[HollowOfWisps]

I save the bones for bone broth, but I wouldn't have any hesitation feeding a carcass to my chickens. Chickens have died from all sorts of random strange things and so does everything that breathes including humans. People have died from little things like choking on a grape, but that doesn't mean you stop eating grapes because someone somewhere has choked and died on a grape. Chicken are carnivores and their digestive system is designed to eat small mammals and reptiles who have even smaller bones that could get stuck compared to larger chicken bones.

 

[dennisma1]

I toss chicken and turkey carcasses to my flock all the time.

Sometimes it's the mess from the strainer after I've made stock. Sometimes I already have enough stock in the freezer and just throw it in.

It's probably theoretically possible for a chicken to choke on a bone, but considering that they're capable of eating mice and small snakes whole I'd expect that to be exceedingly rare.

I wish I could unsee my hens fighting over a mouse, running it down , one flipping it into the air and eating it whole. It was like dinosaurs brought to life. They do same for lizards. I guess mice are just cuter.

 

[K0k0shka]

There's an important physical and physiological difference between a chicken swallowing a mouse whole, and a chicken swallowing a bone off a chicken carcass. The mouse, being whole, is nice and smooth on the outside, with the sharp little bones inside the body where they can't puncture anything on the way down the esophagus and through the crop. The bones only come into play once the mouse reaches the gizzard and gets ground up, but the gizzard has a very tough lining (meant to protect itself from being ground up), so a bone can't cause damage in there. A sharp piece of bone off the carcass goes down on its own though, pointy ends sticking out, through the soft esophagus and the soft, floppy bag that is the crop. Good opportunities for stabbing there. So, we can't say that eating exposed sharp bones from a chicken carcass is the same as chickens swallowing mice and lizards during their natural foraging behaviors. It's not a fair comparison.

 

[Pampered chicken girl]

Chicken are carnivores

Just to clear up something, chickens are omnivores not carnivores