chocolate cake

[Siler]

Well the original poster has decided it best to just not feed it to her flock. In the end it is our own personal decisions what to feed to our own flocks. Take what information you will of it, but in the end the cacao bean is toxic. The amount of cacao is going to vary in every chocolate food item. Generally the darker it is the more cacao the food item contains. One chocolate doughnut will not kill one bird let alone an entire flock so no harm no foul.

 

[Gray Ghost]

Quote:
"Memo...feed mayonnaise to tuna...."

GG

 

[thechickenchick]

Quote:
"Memo...feed mayonnaise to tuna...."

GG

 

[Ohhhdear]

Glad I found this thread! My son's 19th birthday cake was a Sam's Club triple chocolate fudge "death by chocolate" type with an insane amount of fudgey frosting and flaked dark chocolate on the edges. After the party I scraped off the plates in the "for the chickens" scraps bucket, then thought seriously about the chocolate.
If it had been MILK chocolate I don't think I'dve worried too much, but it's dark chocolate, and not just a little bit.... maybe two cups or more of dark chocolate buttercream with all that flaked chocolate besides.

I've occasionally given the girls (and my dogs) minute licks of chocolate ice cream or an occasional Oreo cookie with no problems. Oreos have more food coloring in them than chocolate anyways. But there's no way I'll give them any of my stash of 60% or 70% cacao dark chocolate bars!!

I agree; it's the heavy concentration of theobromine in darker kinds of chocolate that's the danger, and why I chose to put the frosting in the compost pile rather than in the chicken run.

However, they thoroughly enjoyed the bits of leftover cranberry sauce, the turkey carcass, and the leftover sweet potato mash!

 

[BeccaB00]

I've heard of people say that they 'got away saftely' with feeding chocolate to their chickens. It's a NO NO do not EVER feed chocolate to chickens. It's can kill them.

 

[Pet Duck Boy]

What the heck? WHY would I feed my chickens ANY chocolate. Ya'll are crazy. I would NEVER give up a CRUMB of chocolate for my chickens! Chocolate cake is too precious!

(In all seriousness, I wouldn't feed it anyways. Not saying it will kill them, but I wouldn't feed them something that is of no benefit to them health wise.)

 

[Naughty]

My girls occasionally get a few crumbs of cookies - or that lil last piece of cake from the pan - with 7 chickens scarfing it - there isn't enough eaten by any one chick to cause harm - the amount of cocoa in a cake is minimal anyways... a homemade 2 layer cake only has a little bit in it for the whole cake. I'm sure the sugar isn't the best thing in the world for them so it's probably more of a danger than that trace amount of chocolate. Life is too short to worry about every lil thing. My girls are happy and healthy so far.

 

[Lunachick]

Any leftover chocolate in my house never makes it to the chickens...........stale, burnt it's all good to me.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

The dose makes the poison.

How much actual chocolate are you thinking of giving an animal? Actual chocolate as in what is the actual amount of chocolate in the cake or cookie or whatever?

I'd be more concerned about the big hit of sugar and fat than I would the chocolate itself.

Spread among the thirty or so birds I have in my static hen yard at the moment the chocolate in a cake wouldn't concern me much. Too many birds for the amount of cake that any one individual would get.

Not that I think they would eat it, but I certainly wouldn't be doing that with a big piece of unsweetened baking chocolate where then actual chocolate content (with its attendant theobromine) would be 100%.

Big hits of chocolate aren't particularly good for people either. But it's still the fat and sugar that would be the greatest concern.

A quicky Google on "poultry" and "theobromine" found this.

Theobromine as undesirable substances in animal feed
Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/contam_op_ej725_theobromine_en,0.pdf?ssbinary=true

It mainly concerns itself with incorporating chocolate or cocoa containing commodities into animal feed where the theobromine content could potentially be pretty big since they'd be eating so much of it. But it does mention its affects on many kinds of animals including chickens.

 

[abhaya]

A very sm. all amount isnt gonna hurt them but I would not make a regular habit out of it