Cucumbers & Tomatoes

[Neolones]

I have a large garden this year, that is producing abundance of cherry tomatoes & cucumbers. We are sharing with the neighbors and we are eating as much as we can, but I am still overflowing with cucumbers & tomatoes. So I have been giving a large cucumber a day to my 6 birds and maybe 10-25 cherry tomatoes a day. The girls will devour them in minutes.

My question here is, should I cut back, could giving them too many cucumbers & tomatoes harm them in any way?

 

[PippinTheChicken]

My chickens sometimes get leftover salad, it's perfectly fine for them.

Giving them too much could fill them up so they don't eat their food they need for laying eggs

 

[MommaHen1996]

Should be fine, make sure to add some oyster grit to help them digest, u might notice red poo, from the tomatoes, lol but make sure they are eating their layer feed too...I made the ,intake of over pampering mine with spinach and watermelon and all sorts of veggies...then they didn’t want to eat their pellets or their scratch, they’d just grumble at me for no treats .

 

[FuzzyOwlFeet]

I actually freeze my extra tomatoes and cucumber so they have something cold to peck at during the hot summer days. They also can't gobble them up so they still eat their layer feed since they can't stuff themselves with the veggies. I've been doing it for years, never had an issue.

 

[danceswithronin]

I always throw leftover tomatoes and cucumbers in the run on top of my chickens' regular feed, never noticed an issue (and they love it).

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Treats should not exceed 10% of dietary intake, you risk unbalancing the diet. Offered frozen, will help with heat mitigation if you have really hot days.

Have you considered making gazpacho for yourself??? (Lots of variations - if it calls for Worchestershire sauce, look elsewhere though)

 

[3KillerBs]

All veggie trimmings and scraps and all the munged up garden produce that we can't use get tossed into the chicken run.

They eat what they want and the rest becomes one with the bedding as compost.

I also give them roast bones with the meat clinging to them and the carcasses from roast chicken or turkey -- which balances out the protein a bit.

 

[nuthatched]

Treats should not exceed 10% of dietary intake, you risk unbalancing the diet. Offered frozen, will help with heat mitigation if you have really hot days.

Have you considered making gazpacho for yourself??? (Lots of variations - if it calls for Worchestershire sauce, look elsewhere though)

Does vegetation count as treats? Most chickens would eat leaves and grass when the free range.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Does vegetation count as treats? Most chickens would eat leaves and grass when the free range.

Yes - just like BOSS counts as treats. Or a watermelon. Carrots. ANY thing offered, no matter how "healthy" in isolation, which supplants more than 10% of a complete and balanced diet is a dietary health risk to your flock.

 

[K0k0shka]

make sure to add some oyster grit to help them digest

Those are two separate things. Grit helps them digest. Oyster provides calcium. Not interchangeable. I've heard that there's a difference in terminology between the US and the UK, and you haven't listed your location, but in any case, oyster is too crumbly to help digestion so I'm guessing anything that has oyster in its name is probably used for calcium, and not for digestion (so "oyster grit" = "oyster shell", not "grit" as in the rocks that help digestion).

Clarifying because there might be folks new to chickening who read this and get confused, thinking that providing oyster shell checks both boxes (calcium and digestion) when it doesn't.