Foods that Chickens Can't Eat?

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Green potato skins (which I find to be rare) I avoid, along with avocado skins and pits...but mine get potatoes, the occasional bit of avocado innards, apple seeds, an odd orange. Most of it, they eat. Some they leave and it gets composted in. Never any health issues.

Oh, and apple pulp (from cider making) by the bucket, full of seeds.

 

[Cool_Catrules456]

There is something in one part of an avocado that is bad for chickens, I can't remember what part. So avocado is on my do not feed list.

Practically everything you eat or your chickens eat contains something that can be harmful, including things we eat or feed them all the time. The secret is dosage. An apple seed contains cyanide, a deadly poison. When I was a kid I swallowed a few apple seeds. Why am I not dead? Heck, I didn't even get sick. There is enough cyanide to cause problems for a teeny tiny bug that eats the seed but not enough to even be noticed in a chicken or human. Most fruit seeds contain some cyanide. My chickens roam in an orchard and eat fallen fruit, including seeds, all the time. They don't eat enough seeds to harm themselves. Their poop might get loose eating all that fruit though. When I make fruit jelly I do not dump a concentration of seeds where the chickens can get to them. I consider that a reasonable precaution.

Members of the cabbage family contain a substance that can damage your thyroid, it can even kill you, if you eat enough of it. But you would need to eat a few pounds a day every day for a few weeks for the levels to build up to harmful levels unless you have a thyroid problem to start with. Cabbage is considered a great treat for chickens though mine prefer kale or chard. If all they ate was cabbage for a time period cabbage could harm them. This is why you should feed these things in moderation. A little generally won't hurt them. Certainly mot a little cabbage.

I read an article where they were testing the pulp from squeezed oranges as a food for chickens. I don't know what percentage of the overall diet was that pulp, I'd guess not a huge part.

What foods do I avoid for chickens? Green potato peels or potatoes that have turned green from exposure to the sun. You should avoid them too. The green is actually photosynthesis which is not harmful to chickens. But another invisible toxin grows in potatoes exposed to sunlight so the green is a warning. The chickens would have to eat a certain amount before it causes a problem but it is a concentrated toxin. I avoid it. Regular white potatoes are fine. Regular white potatoes do contain something that can cause problems but a normal healthy human would have to eat over 50 pounds of potatoes at a sitting to get enough to cause a problem. I like potatoes but not that much.

Dried uncooked beans also contain something that can be harmful, Red Kidney beans are the worst. When cooked they are fine. If the chickens snag an occasional dried bean while cleaning out my garden I don't worry about it, but I don't dump a pile of uncooked or under-cooked dried beans where they can get to them. I also try to remove most of the dried beans from the garden before I let them in.

The leaves of members of the nightshade family like tomatoes, peppers, or potatoes contain a toxin. The fruit is fine but the leaves are bad for them. That toxin causes the leaves to be really bitter, so usually the chickens take one bite and move on, but if you toss the plants into the run and that is the only green stuff available they might eat it. But as long as they have a better choice it's usually not a problem. Still, don't toss the plants themselves in as food.

That's all I can think of on my do not feed list. For the rest of the stuff, feed in moderation and you should be fine. For thousands of years chickens have free ranged where toxic plants grow. They are not extinct. When given a choice they generally don't eat things bad for them, at least not in volumes sufficient to harm them.

Ive feed pepper plants, avocado leaves, tomato plants, and potato leaves before, no problem. In moderation, I think its fine.