Help! My wife is mad at me for feeding the chickens pizza!

[joydix]

Can someone please help me convince her that it's okay for the girls to have fun table scraps?

Everything in moderation right?!

EDIT: Our girls usually get much smaller quantities of veggie scraps, but this was a couple of weeks ago on New Years Day and all the girls were fine

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Well one time won’t hurt I guess but personally I stick with greens, rarely a cup or two of leftover popcorn with nutritional yeast (25 birds) leftover sweet potatoes cooked that sort of thing. In the am I throw out wild bird seed about 2 cups for all of them and sprinkle around their rather large area. Hey have eaten every living thing out there so this lets them “forage” MY QUESTION TO YOU IS:HOW DO YOU KEEP THE FURNITURE AND RUG cleanlaughing but it is a real question!

 

[joydix]

Love that , when hubby was alive, the same, no leftover pizza or bacon or doughnuts. Oh, and he did not die from eating any of these things, just incase some one wonders.

Well that is what I was thinking. We would never have that pizza go uneaten!!!

 

[Rommy]

Can someone please help me convince her that it's okay for the girls to have fun table scraps?

Everything in moderation right?!

EDIT: Our girls usually get much smaller quantities of veggie scraps, but this was a couple of weeks ago on New Years Day and all the girls were fine

Can someone please help me convince her that it's okay for the girls to have fun table scraps?

Everything in moderation right?!

EDIT: Our girls usually get much smaller quantities of veggie scraps, but this was a couple of weeks ago on New Years Day and all the girls were fine

View attachment 2498991

What did they feed chickens in the old days?
1900-1920: Chicken Meat Is a Delicacy

The average chicken would lay between 80-150 eggs per year. The chicken diet was basically whatever they could forage with occasional handouts of grain, scraps and waste kitchen products. A hen destined for the pot would be fattened up with extra grains and buttermilk if available.

 

[Judy Todd]

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They’ll be fine. Mine get whatever food scraps our dogs don’t want all the time....including chicken. And don’t poo poo me on that. Remember that they are just small, feathery, dinosaurs with probably below average dino intelligence. And I’ve seen Jurassic Park, they are each other back in the day and if they were a little bit bigger they would definitely try and eat you.

Finally some common sense again.

 

[Judy Todd]

My vet recommended not feeding my 100 chickens anything but Purina Chicken Chow. He said that they have been making chicken feed for a long time, and they tweak it every year to perfect it even more. He says that even kitchen vegetable and fruit scraps can be difficult to digest and decrease their egg laying, longevity and overall health. So I compost all vegetable and fruit matter now instead of giving it my chickens. Not as fun as feeding them treats, but just like dogs and cats, it may be more healthy to stick to the standard food. They love it and don't seem to mind the same thing every day. I give them oats or meal worms as an occasional treat.
In the case of pizza, since chickens don't normally eat dairy, I would remove the cheese and give it to my dogs and cats instead. It might upset the hens' stomach/crop since dairy is much more difficult to digest. The chickens can eat the crust and tomato sauce as their treat. Kind of like feeding ducks bread at a pond. Everything in moderation I agree.
My chickens are super healthy after following my vet's advice. They used to have yolks that broke easily in the frying pan. Good luck with your quest! Elizabeth, Shanti Permaculture Farm

Purina loves your vet!!

 

[CLSranch]

Yea don't feed them bowls of milk. bla bla bla. Your chickens will be fine and your wife needs to calm down. I've seen my chickens pick a deer carcass clean. Yes that's meat and nothing else just saying they will eat anything.

 

[Judy Todd]

Seems fine to me, as long as that's not their regular diet.

There's a lot of lists out there about all the terrible junk foods you're not supposed to feed chickens. Funny thing is, 90% of what's on those lists could also apply to people. Greasy salty pizza is not great for anyone, but as an occasional treat it's not likely to do anything worse than give them a bit of indigestion.

Most of the really bad foods - the ones that people online warn you will "poison" your birds - the birds are smart enough not to eat. Things like milkweed, avocado pits, onions, etc, they will instinctively avoid. The only human "food" - though I wouldn't call it that - that I really avoid giving them is the really high-sugar super processed stuff like cake and candy, which we don't really eat in my house anyway. That stuff is so far from anything in nature that their instincts won't recognize it as the poison it is (it really is for us, too).

But pizza is basically bread, cheese, and tomato sauce, and the only stuff that's really bad for them is the excessive salt and processed oils, which I think are a small enough percentage of the total weight of the food to be no more than an irritant, although I wouldn't give them lage amounts of it regularly.

Isn't it funny how people will feed their cats and dogs cheap brands of food that's basically the most low-grade meat that's considered unfit for human consumption, processed with tons of junk to make it taste better, just because it comes in a can that says "fancy feast"; and they'll feed themselves ding dongs and hot pockets and glucose syrup drinks as long as they come from a nice clean package; but when it comes to their chickens, they'll insist that anything less than organic formulated layer feed and fresh veggie scraps from a list of approved foods will poison them.

Right on, if everyone cared more about what they ate and quit worrying about what their chickens ate, we all would be healthyer,(is that a word).!!

 

[CLSranch]

ier but who's counting

 

[Judy Todd]

Our oldest son's college friend who ended up sleeping on our couch for 3 years.

Wow, you sure are kind, what a lucky young man.

 

[Judy Todd]

ier but who's counting

Thanks