fairy ring fungus Toxic or not?

[bethanyrae]

We have these fairy ring fungi growing around some of our evergreen trees, and it's about impossible to do a google search for whether it's toxic to chickens. There seems to be some called chicken fungus, and they also like to serve some with chicken! UH.

My fingernails are crusted with it now, but you can't get it all up, and we're going to look for a fungicide...maybe....if that's not going to hurt the hens.

Anybody know anything about this stuff?

Thanks,
bethanyrae

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I've never known my birds to eat toadstools and we have a lot of them in Florida in the rainy season. I wouldn't worry about it.

.....Alan.

 

[Puck-Puck]

Hi, there!
If the mushrooms are growing around certain of your evergreen trees, they are probably helping the trees' roots take up nutrients. Before hauling out fungicide, could you post a close-up photo of the mushrooms? Many are edible for people, and may well be harmless for chickens as well. If I could see, I might be able to help.

 

[silkiechicken]

I agree, if it's around the tree, it is likely to be mutualistic and essential for the tree to survive. For a period of time, evergreen trees were taken to Europe for tree farming, but they did not survive. Turned out that a specific fungus did not exist in their soils, so the trees could now grow until the fungus was imported.

 

[elmo]

Is it in your chicken run? Generally speaking, I only worry about toxic plants if they're in the run and the chickens might be tempted out of boredom or lack of other options to chow down on them. For example, I've got english ivy growing in the back of my yard, but our chickens aren't interested in eating it (it tastes bad, apparently). So I'm not going to bother ripping it out.

 

[SurprisingWoman]

My girls have a half acre to forage in. This spring was VERY wet and we had mushrooms everywhere.

I did a lot of research and I read that the chickens seemed to know which mushies were okay and which were not.

A couple of week later we had a new growth of fungi sprout in a new place and the chickens didn't touch them.

I think they have a pretty good idea of what they can eat. I wouldn't pick and toss things into their run I was unsure of, but if they have a good area to forage in and they are eating them, it should be okay.

 

[Imp]

The very first wild mushrooms I ever ate were Fairy Ring mushrooms, growing in a cemetary. if I survived that your chickens are fine.

Imp- please don't eat them unless they are properly identified.

 

[bethanyrae]

Oh wow...thanks everyone!
I even have a big hardcover mushroom ID book, and it didn't say anything near what you all did. We also have rings around a lot of our trees that the hens don't have access to. I guess we'll leave them! We love our trees, too.

I did see little peck marks on a few of the ones I pulled out, but only a couple of hens were back there. I'll try to get a picture of the ones I didn't pull.

I just love BYC and you all...
thanks

 

[Stephoney]

I know this is an old thread, but it was very helpful! I have a silver double-laced Barnevelder chick/pullet who I noticed yesterday was running around playing keep away with a dried mushroom. I took it from her, no small feet, and didn’t think much of it. Today when I was was walking around with the little flock she runs with (an opal legar, split legbar and another silver double laced Barnevelder) I noticed that she had found another patch of mushrooms. I scared her off and grabbed all of the dried mushrooms. A few seconds later she’d found ANOTHER mushroom in a different spot and took off with it. I couldn’t believe how intent she was on finding them. I grabbed that one too and then came in to see if I could find any information on them. We live in the PNW with evergreens in our yard. I’m almost certain that they are fairy ring shrooms that she keeps finding. I guess I can let her eat them after all! Maybe I should breed her and see if she has an affinity for truffles, too