Do you think it is wrong to feed chickens chicken scraps?

[sonew123]

I feed my birds everything except citrus items and hard to digest items. There is nothing wrong with feeding your birds extra chicken or even turkey bones...It's great protein that would go to waste...I swear my crew knows when T-day is! Whatever isn't eaten by the end of the day, then gets tossed-bones and all to prevent an open invitation to predators. I cook eggs for them a lot during Winter. Actually, once a week Ill make a couple of pounds of rice..pureed leftover meats..leftover veggies and tons of cooked duck eggs..I heat some up in the mornings during Winter besides feeding them their normal feed..They are happy and healthy and giving me more eggs through our Tundra weather than all Summer!

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

Also any cracked eggs are hard-boiled then mashed up, shell and all. I used to scramble them but I've found hard-boiling is less cleanup for the pans!

This is genius. I get so frustrated with the gunky pan when I scramble mine. Thanks for the idea!

 

[Baymule]

I scramble the eggs that get cracked for the girls, shells and all. I also crumble up lots of hot red peppers in it. They can't taste the heat and I read that the "hotness" shocks the worms in the intestines into turning loose of the intestinal wall and they pass out in the poo. Analyzing this, you'd think they would just reinfect themselves because they peck their own poo, but mine all seem to be healthy and happy.

 

[Mavrk]

I just want to hit on this,
You don't need to cook the eggs or meat, I have for 30 some years feed raw meat (including chicken) and raw eggs to chickens and have never had a problem with egg eaters or cannibals.

Chris

Perhaps this should be its own thread, but I would like to know if others have the same experience. I wonder if the raw egg thing is just something that perpetuates from word of mouth or if some have experience contrary to that of Chris. I am too new to offer anything (my pullets should start laying in late Jan or early Feb).

 

[mickey328]

I can't say for sure about the raw egg thing...it makes logical sense, but who knows? Just in case, I scramble the cracked ones and feed them back. I only give them raw beef because I worry about them picking up worms from other raw meat. I do definitely feed them chicken...whatever scraps we have from our meals. Plus, when I make stock, I go through it and remove all the bones then give them the "spent" meat and veggies.

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

Perhaps this should be its own thread, but I would like to know if others have the same experience. I wonder if the raw egg thing is just something that perpetuates from word of mouth or if some have experience contrary to that of Chris. I am too new to offer anything (my pullets should start laying in late Jan or early Feb).

It's my understanding that giving raw egg is fine, as long as it isn't in a form that will lead to egg-eating. So a bowl of raw eggs won't be a problem, but cracking some eggs in a bowl and leaving all the large shell pieces in there might be.

I scramble mine because I've had egg eaters in the past and it was awful and a giant pain in the tuckus. I don't want to do anything, no matter how small, that might contribute to having that problem again!

Also, I feed raw meat to my hens, no problem. The other week I bought a bunch of ground pork, steak and hot dogs at a great little butcher near my dad's house, put it all in a cooler bag, and drove it home two and a half hours. Got home super late, unloaded the car and went to bed. Around 2pm the next day, I found all that meat in that cooler bag--now warmed to room temperature. Blah. The chickens were MIGHTY happy that day. I think it was the best day of their entire lives so far.

 

[galanie]

I just want to hit on this,
You don't need to cook the eggs or meat, I have for 30 some years feed raw meat (including chicken) and raw eggs to chickens and have never had a problem with egg eaters or cannibals. 

Chris

Perhaps this should be its own thread, but I would like to know if others have the same experience. I wonder if the raw egg thing is just something that perpetuates from word of mouth or if some have experience contrary to that of Chris. I am too new to offer anything (my pullets should start laying in late Jan or early Feb).

I've been giving mine eggs just like Chris for only 3 years and no egg eating. They will not touch one that isn't cracked or broken. But the minute I myself put one down and crack it, WATCH OUT. That egg is history! They'll suck out the yolk then eat the shell. No egg eaters here either.

 

[CreativeCowgirl]

I also feed my chickens chicken scraps. My opinion is, humans are moral creatures, so therefore cannibalism is wrong for us. Animals have no moral sense of right or wrong, just instincts and feelings. So I have no problem feeding them chicken.

Also, I work at a fast food chicken restaurant, and there is a lot of chicken (and also vegetable matter) that goes to waste. So I take all the scraps that would otherwise be thrown away and feed them to my chickens. This is really nice because the chickens love it and it reduces my feed bill.

 

[triplepurpose]

After making stock and having saved all the meat I can for human food, I throw all the solids from the stock pot (bones, meat, cartilage, skin, veggies, whatever) into the chicken run. I do the same whether it's beef stock, chicken stock, duck stock, turkey stock or baboon stock. The chickens eat every last soft scrap and the bones disappear into the litter. You can't even see or smell a thing afterwards btw either, it's like the stuff was never there. For a while I felt weird about giving chicken to the chickens, and so I would feed them scraps from other animals only, and compost the chicken scraps--but that always seemed like a waste of good animal protein, which is something I can never seem to have too much of on my homestead-based feeding methods. But eventually I realized that chickens are naturally opportunistic cannibals and carrion scavengers anyway and therefore the occasional addition of a few small scraps of chicken meat seems unlikely be harmful.

Would I feed my chickens a diet based on protein from chicken meat? Would I raise a flock of chickens for meat to feed other chickens? Would I go out and buy packages of chicken to feed my chickens? No, because that would be unnatural, weird, ecologically unsound, unhealthy, inefficient in terms of production, and generally just kind of dumb in a common sense way. But recycling the occasional household scraps to avoid waste, and use a free resource to provide a little much-need protein supplementation from time to time is the exact opposite.

 

[ChickensRDinos]

Riki,
You may want to acutely want to look into Bovine Spongiform Enecphalopathy BSE (mad cow disease).
The feed has to be contaminated with prion disease which is found in the brain and spinal cord not the actual meat or bones.Now keep in mind that in some cases of BSE there were no Bovine by-products even used[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif].
The prion disease can be be found in many types of animals,
Bovine - [/FONT]Bovine Spongiform Enecphalopathy (BSE),
Sheep - Scrapie,
Humans - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)

Also chickens are Omnivores and not Herbivores like Bovine.


Chris

x2 prion diseases are for the most part transmitted through the consumption of brain and spinal matter only. Eating same species muscle tisse is not a problem. Most take years if not decades after consumption to show symptoms. Prions are in no way related to or specific to cows, that just happens to be one example of a prion disease.

Kuru is another human to human prion disease. There is an interesting documentary about the disease and the science of prions that explains it really well if you are interested.