Do you feed your chickens meat....(like chicken)?

[greyhorsewoman]

Chickens aren't just omnivores, they are scavengers. Free range chickens WILL eat the carcass of dead animals, including other chickens, not just bugs, worms, etc. It is NATURAL.

Cows consuming 'meat' only do it when we create a way that 'bluffs' them into thinking they are eating grain. A cow or horse would not naturally eat meat, even if they are confined in a paddock with a dead cow or horse. They will starve to death first, so it is UNNATURAL.

What is gross to us have no bearing on what is an acceptable food source to any certain animal.

 

[chickened]

Hey! I have an idea for that unwanted horse!! I'm kidding, kidding kidding.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
While I agree with you on every point....(and remember Taz didn't want to know what goes into commercial chicken feed

)
My chickens free range all day long and STILL love chicken. I don't go out of my way to provide it for them, but if it's in the leftovers that I save for them, they get it.

Better than watching those documentaries mentioned (and I have) read The Omnivores Dilemma. Forget the commercial chicken and eggs, you'll look twice at your feed lot beef.

The salmonilla issue goes away when the meat is handled and cooked well. Salmonilla is everywhere. In the soil in feces.... Yes even in a non farm perfectly groomed back yard... The only time it becomes a problem is when proper hygene is not observed in handling food or in the processing... The big problem with those big factories is that they are BIG. And the fact that the modern american these days mostly dont cook for themselves any more. Heaven forbid process their own meat or supervise the raising of that meat product.

I remember a time when you could grab a small handfull of hamberger and eat it raw. Grocery store bought.... Mom and I used to do it when I was about seven or eight. A little salt a little pepper and it was yummy. Nowadays I have literally had to sign a release (honest to God) to have my hamburger patty cooked medium rare. The efforts of the meat packing industry these days to give us safe food have been heroic.... and yet have left the food we buy colorless and without flavor.

In the era before factory farming my dad was the son of a sharecropper. They farmed everything from Pigs to Cotton and eventually Oranges as they worked their way from Florida to San Bernardino. Some of the stories he told of how they handled meat and what they fed their animals, would make you cringe. Yet My dad got a whoopin for tying the cow in the front yard to graze and forgetting to leave her a bucket of water. Dad even did some time working in a Catsup factory.... Like hotdogs and Bolognia... you dont want to know what goes in there. They used to hang hams in the pumphouse (coolest place on the farm) wrapped in cheese cloth, when it came time for some ham they would scrape off the mold and peel back the cheeze cloth and slice off some meat for dinner then wrap the whole thing back up. They ate everything from the cow because it was sacrilige to waste.

I am seriously considering rasing my own beef and learning how to butcher my own chicken. Though I would have to hire a mobile processor to come do the beef.

 

[arianna]

I agree to some points with perchie.girl,
and gristar: I give my chickens meat as well specially in leftover soups and stews, I just don't give them in large quantities and all the time.

 

[elizabethbinary]

It wasn't until after I threw the carcass out I realized I was feeding one of my roosters to his own wife and children. They loved him. Twice.

 

[classicsredone]

Quote:

(Insert Donner Party joke here.)

 

[BeautifulPacificNorthwest]

My chickens also feast on chicken and turkey carcasses. And ham bones, and steak bones and ribs.

I fully believe if I fell down in the chicken yard and couldn't get up, it'd be only a matter of time before they turned their sights on me

 

[Miss Lydia]

Today I opened a can of wild salmon for mine and they loved it, course I do believe they'd eat us if they had the chance..

 

[MSDeb]

Yes, we feed ours small amounts of left over meat. They can clean a turkey neck as well as ants! We do not feed them left over chicken, dh says it's too creepy. I doubt the chickens would care, as many of you have said, they would eat us if given half a chance.

 

[88Haywood88]

My chickens have even eaten their own freshly hatched chicks. Chickens are probably the most cruel and impartial animal I have ever raised. So, yeah I feed them chicken. I also give them crawdads... they love them.