Some people and vets say it messes with their red blood count and causes anemia. Since you've been doing the garlic treatment for so long, would it be feasible for you to have your chickens' blood count tested? For science and curiosity sake of course.
I've thought about it, just to satisfy curiosity because all of a sudden, despite historically being a common additive given to poultry with no deaths noted due to it, this is now a risk that everyone's aware of and wondering about, but there's never been even once a case of anemia in my flock. I see it in other people's chickens but have never once seen it in mine.
In future I want to get a lot of tests done for a lot of things, and that would be something I would check for. However, I'm not rolling in money, quite skint actually, living pay to pay, so no splashing out for me, lol. Hopefully in future.
Testing on supplementing chickens with garlic has been done in many studies over the decades, seeking the upper toxicity limit; you'd think they would have come across this (unjustifiably) famous garlic-induced anemia decades ago if it were a risk worth being cautious about.
I've done a fair bit of research on Heinz Body Anemia, and it's a
very remote risk and appears to occur only in some susceptible individuals. It's such a remote risk there are thousands of things far more likely to kill your chickens. All the cases of HBA I've heard of were in horses, cats, and dogs, and they were very, very rare even then. Never heard of a case in chickens. Even in the species in which it has been proven, it's rarer than deaths due to lightning strikes, lol!
I think the risk is analogous to the 'avidin in egg albumen' risk. Don't know if you're familiar with it, I assume you probably are, but it's a good example of professional fearmongering over smoke and mirrors, people running around like a headless Chicken Little over a potentiality that's incredibly unlikely. Hysteria, in a word. The science behind it doesn't justify the reactions to it. Professionals are playing it so safe they're forsaking commonsense. Unfortunately very, very few vets actually know anything significant about nutrition. They're actually trained in what little they do know about animal nutrition by pet food companies, and therefore recommend the diets they're told to, without any solid knowledge of what that diet is doing to the animals.
Anyway, in case you're not familiar with the hubbub about avidin: some vets are now saying don't feed your dogs and cats raw egg, because the avidin in the egg white can interfere with biotin absorption. Research supporting that is based in part on pigs being fed enormous quantities of raw egg white, long-term. Even then, the symptoms included alopecia (hair loss) and dandruff. Wow, toxic! lol.
And on the basis of that they're recommending never feeding dogs and cats raw eggs despite the fact that the avidin levels are very low in egg white and not present at all in egg yolk, the part dogs and cats prefer anyway, and cooking destroys the avidin completely. All despite the centuries of cats and dogs visibly benefiting from addition of egg to their diet, and the fact that wild felines and canids eat it as a normal part of their diet when they can get it. And still we have this hoo-raa about it and vet nurse/doctor students memorizing the 'correct' answer: no, don't feed eggs anymore!
Fads in health, lol...
Trends and fashions. It's supposed to be objective science, not imagination-fueled extrapolation that blows risks out of proportion. I've been studying veterinary medicine myself and unfortunately plenty of professionals know less about health than the average 'nerd' layperson does.
If I get those tests done, rest assured I'll be posting them on this forum. Maybe on my personal profile as well as in a thread, however will spread it widely enough to answer questions people have given me. You're not the first to ask and I have been hoping to find out myself, once and for all.
Best wishes.
