does anyone know about old bread?

[Debbienmousey]

Quote:
Right on the money Elmo but 'feed' is not bread , feed contains unprossed grain bread does not .

What about whole grain breads that actually have whole seeds/grains in them? That's kind of like feed, isn't it? I personally wouldn't take the chance.

My mother bakes whole grain bread, and mills the grain herself before baking. If you mean moldy "whole" grain bread, being bread that contains the entire milled grain, then so far as I know it is safe for chickens. We don't have whole-house AC so when the weather gets hot here the bread molds if we don't eat it fast enough. We either give it to the dogs or the chickens - normally the chickens. They love it and it hasn't done them any harm. Normally of course, it's only a slice or two at a time.

And yes, this was always greenish-blue mold.

 

[silkiechicken]

I personally don't feed moldy things to the birds becuase I figure why risk their health? Of course any live thing can put up with some amount of paracites and toxins in their system, but why risk it? You can eat a moldy slice of bread, you can eat fish out of polluted ponds or rivers once in a while, but over the long term, it's not good for you, and if you get too much toxin at once, that will make you sick. Seeing as birds are excellent at hiding any kind of sickness till it is often late, any minor discomfort would likely be hidden from view from their flock and predators.

However my chickens have access to moldy things as they free range places including compost and are not sick because of it. But they also don't tend to eat things that have gone bad, just pick through it, scratch it, and it sits there just composting in the end. I wouldn't offer/feed moldy bread to caged or penned birds who may eat everything out of boredom.

Plus, just because a strain of mold is in the same family as that which makes penicillin, does not mean it is good for you, can heal you, or will have the same action as penicillin which is a purified product from a particular strain of mold. For example, many flu viruses are in the same family, the common flu, seasonal flu, avian flu... all can make you sick, all are in the same flu family, but each has it's own effects. There are also different strains of E.coli. You have some in your gut you live with, and you have varieties which cause people to be hospitalized. They are in the same family....

 

[woodmort]

We habitually toss those bread wrappers with one or two slices or roll packages with one or two rolls left in our freezer and then forget about them. A year ago we cleaned the freezer and must have had 30 of those so tossed them--a few at a time-- to the chickens. They loved them but, like anything, don't overdo. BTW, it is a riot watching a bunch of chickens chasing a frozen hamburger roll down the hill or one bird with a full slice of bread impaled on her beak go tearing off with half a dozen of her sisters chasing her.

 

[WVDan44]

When I was a kid, my Dad bought old bread from a local bakery. He would mix it with laying mash and hot water and feed it to our chickens in the winter. They thrived on it and layed eggs straight through. He also added it to his dog food which he mixed the same way. He had hunting dogs, coon hounds, fox hounds, and a beagle or two, and the bread supplemented his feeding program. We did this for years before the bakery stopped selling the day old bread. Those were good times. We had two barrels filled with wrapped loaves of all kinds of breads from our weekly trips to the bakery. I can still recall the aroma of the feed room and that bread.

 

[suburbanhomesteader]

One thing I recently learned from Backyard Poultry was to limit carbs to chickens during extreme heat waves, as the carbs rev up their metabolism and increase the heat they generate internally.

So in Texas, bread would have to be a winter treat. I don't think bread of any kind has enough protein in it to be considered anything more than a treat (kind of like scratch)