Feeding beans

[Toril]

I own a health food store, and we sell several kinds of beans and grains bulk. I do not cook with beans (although I'm thinking of starting to experiment) and wondered if I can give unsold beans to the chickens. I assume they need to be soaked or sprouted first? Are there any beans that are potentially harmful to them? I really don't want exploding and/or rocket chickens...

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Raw beans have a substance called hemaglutin that can be toxic. Some beans have more than others (scarlet runner beans are pretty bad). Luckily, cooking the beans deactivates the hemaglutin and they should be safe for them then. My birds don't like them much though.

 

[gryeyes]

I wonder if chickens need Beano the way we do? Not sure I want to witness feathered, backwards-facing projectiles scooting around the run in low trajectories.



Edited to make sense - of course they wouldn't be going around BACKWARDS, they'd be beak-forward! That's scarier!!!

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

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Lesson learned, never NEVER read BYC while eating or drinking....

Otherwise things might not go down the right pipe as you laugh.

Seriously, OP, I would try feeding cooked beans in small quantities to see if they liked them. Probably wouldn't hurt as a treat.

I'm guessing though.

 

[HorizonSon]

Our RIRs love sprouted beans, as it turns out. Dumped a bunch of old beans into the compost. Turns out some fell on the ground and started sprouting! I harvested some for us and let the chickens have at the rest; yum yum!

 

[joedie]

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I almost choked!

 

[Moxiechick]

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Not to mention pressure fired eggs! Fire one torpedo!!

 

[Ohhhdear]

My girls ravaged my green beans this summer. The few dried pods I retrieved I shucked and tossed the dried bean seeds to the chickens. They went nuts over them. The farmer behind us raised soybeans this year, and after he ran the combine over the field I gleaned about a bushel of downed stalkes loaded with soybean pods. It took the girls a while to figure out how to break open the pods, but they gobbled the soybeans inside them with gusto. Never noticed any gas or weird looking poops.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

The amount of anti-nutritive factors that beans contain can vary by the exact species. Raw soybeans you should definitely not feed because they can do damage to a bird's digestive tract in any quantity. Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) does not as I recall contain as much as soybeans, but still has some though whether it's enough to be worrisome in other than major amounts I can't recall just now. Peas (Pisum sativum) as in common green garden peas, does not contain any I think which is why they are used in some organic soy-free feeds.

My birds never cared for uncooked whole beans. I had to mill them and mix it into their feed to get them to eat it. Cooked beans on the other hand they scarf right down.

 

[Toril]

Thanks for all the info and laughs!