Don't feed fruit to layers????

[donnavee]

My 8 girls love blueberries in the summer and I feed them grapes and greens through the winter. Of course, not too much, just as a treat. Their main diet is layer pellets and I also give them sunflower seed kernels and yogurt about twice a week. Each of them lays 6 eggs per week on avg - so I don't think the fruit and other treats have reduced their egg production.

 

[sydney13]

no feeding them fruit is perfectly fine

 

[JulieZ]

I fed my chickens watermellon & when I seen them, I thought they had blood on their chest. What a heart stopper. But they devoured it.

 

[hensonly]

It's not just them, when I was reading about chickens before I got my layers, several books said not to feed certain fruit (apples and pears are the two I recall) because it could stop them laying...now I know many people feed all kinds of fruit to their hens with no problem. I wonder if this is an old wives tale that started from the times all chickens free range...about the time that apples and pears are on the ground where chickens can get to them, is about the time egg production slows down coming into winter...maybe this was presumed cause and effect that eventually got turned into "fact"?

By the way, my girls love fruit, too...and there was a thread on here a year or two ago where someone was warning against feeding tomatoes or tomato plants to the hens, saying that is would poison them. So many people wrote back to say they have fed tomatoes and plants for thirty years and never lost a chicken because of it, that I stopped worrying about it and gave my girls extras from the garden. Tomatoes are also a favorite treat for them.

Good to have information, but it's up to each person to decide whether to act on it or not - keep the info flowing!


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[ThePamperedPullet]

We feed all ours an occasional treat of in season citrus. We have a huge grapefruit tree and 3 orange trees. They love the citrus and it has never affected their laying. We were averaging 1100 eggs a month last year and we are almost at that already this year and that is out of about 45 laying age hens.

 

[RIVERRAT]

My Girls Love Watermelon.

 

[weirdmuse]

I think if my ladies didn't receive their breakfast of warm apples, grapes and oatmeal on cold winter mornings they would hunt me down. Mine get either apples or grapes almost every day (treat portions, not food portions) and have consistently given me almost an egg a day all winter. They also get lettuce and arugula several times a week and watermelon and tomatoes in the summer.

 

[harewizard]

I think the key word here is "treat". As long as your layers are getting the necessary vitamins and minerals; layer feed, protein, calcium, fresh water etc... then fruits are Ok. Any ONE thing in large amounts is not good.

In the winter here, I treat my girls to a warm bowl of oatmeal with yogurt and crushed egg shells. They LOVE it!

I think the only treat we have not given our girls is raw potatoes. I read that is a No-No.

Here is a link that may be helpful:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=2593-Treats_Chart

Lisa

 

[CoopCrazy]

My girls love fruit and i have never seen it slow down egg production .. They got cantalope, apples, pears and watermelon last year and i was still getting 8-10 eggs a day from 11 chickens...