fruit stops the laying of eggs up to 6 months...

[dsqard]

Mine get a chopped up apple every day with their scratch. I got a perfect six eggs out of six layers yesterday. They will eat the apple before the corn, BOSS or peanuts I put in the scratch.

 

[sharol]

During this NASTY snowy weather, I've been giving them an apple (whole, on the coop floor) to play with every couple of days. They leave only the stem and seem to have a great time eating the flesh out of the skin and then eating the skin. I'm averaging 5 of 7 each day (and one of the girls has some laying problems). Last summer they got more watermelon and canteloupe than I did.

 

[jen5680]

Last summer I was getting LOTS of free tomatoes and I gave them some everyday. I usually froze them
so they could have a nice cool treat when it was so hot.
Now b4 I had heard that fruit will make egg laying not be as good I did notice this and couldn't figure out why
they weren't laying as much. After I stopped feeding them these everyday after a few weeks egg laying went right
back to normal so I do think it's true! At least with lots of tomatoes!!!!

 

[MSDeb]

I'm going to chime in here too.

First thing in the morning I give the girls laying pellets which I try to make available all day. A couple of hours later I deliver a mix of chopped apples and bananas with their scratch. On cold days (a subjective term as those of you up North have a different idea of what cold is than us Southerners), I add in some mash and warm water. In return the girls regularly give me nice large, hard shelled, beautiful eggs with nice orange yolks.

All year they get whatever fruit and vegetables are seasonal. In the summer they will knock you down to get the watermellon from you and I do give them citrus. Not a lot, but if it's laying around and the kids don't eat it first it's fair game. I also have put grapefruit halves on nails for them to peck at.

Heck, even the wild birds eat citrus, we've been putting it out for years. And, no I don't steal their eggs so I don't know if I have slowed down their laying but, we have no shortage of blue jays, hummers, and cardinals.

I wouldn't just feed the girls fruit by any means but, as a treat I think it's fine and if I do say so myself I have some gorgeous birds.

Deb

 

[NYREDS]

If it's true then apparently I've never gotten any eggs in 50 years because I've always fed fruit.

 

[Sunny Side Up]

It's only true for those chickens who actually read the article themselves.

But really, I think the nugget of truth here is that layer feed has the ingredients to help optimize egg production. If you are running a commercial egg ranch you may want to limit/eliminate fruit from their diets to get the maximum output from your hens. And for most folks' backyard flocks, a balanced diet is probably best, not too heavy on any one thing. If they ate only fruit, it might possibly affect their egg production. But kept in balance with layer feed and other stuff they are given or scrounge in the yard, fruit won't affect their egg output, especially not to the extent this article says.

Do any of you feed your chickens avocados? I've heard that they aren't good for them, but I don't know. Once I tossed out some overripe avocado into the yard for the chickens, the next day one of them was dead with some greenish goo coming out her vent. I don't know if there was a connection, why the others who ate it weren't affected, if this hen perhaps ate more than her flockmates, I don't know. I asked a local vet who is a long-time chickeneer himself and he said that avocados were NOT bad for chickens, but I still am not sure. That could have just been a coincidence, but I err on the side of caution now.

 

[obaan1]

Mine order it off the menu as a side dish.

 

[dragonlair]

Mine get fruit when I have some and it never seemed to bother their production any. Maybe if you fed them nothing but fruit it might make a dent in the number of eggs they produce.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

You may have read it on Meyer's site. That's the place where most people read it. It's their own belief.

The only time it's a problem is when you feed too much fruit. It's exactly like feeding too much corn. Feeding too much corn and not providing enough protein to layers reduces laying, but nobody ever says that feeding corn causes chickens to not lay eggs.

To produce an egg, a chicken needs to consume a certain amount of protein and other nutrients, including water. If you don't provide all of that in adequate amounts, they aren't going to produce an egg. If you feed too many carbs, whether it's fruit or grain, so that they aren't eating enough of their regular feed and getting enough protein, it's going to reduce egg production. There's nothing special about fruit as far a laying goes. Lots of chickens eat fruit as a regular part of their diet and lay just fine.

Fruit is a natural part of their diet. There are nutrients in fruit that do things like fight cancer. Eating fruit can improve health, just like eating vegetables can. You wouldn't eat a bushel basket of it, though. Just don't feed huge amounts to your chickens, either.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

Duplicate post.