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

[CJONESFAY]

Put the pizza in compost pile. They can have a little but better off putting in compost and then let them get the bugs from it lol

 

[Jajika]

Their health and productivity depend on their overall diet. A layer feed is a complete diet for them, and when you feed them extra junk food they eat less of their balanced food obviously.
Acceptable table scraps are the veggie scraps, lettuce, beet greens, peas, squash (my girls are crazy for spaghetti squash) you get the idea.

That said, a few pieces of pizza won’t kill anybody. They may get diarrhea. I have a pet rooster that is somewhere between 50-70% blind and he struggles to eat actual chicken food because it’s hard to see and his aim is shit. So I feed him no-no foods often like bread and cereal because it’s easy for me to hand feed to him quickly and his aim doesn’t have to be perfect to get ahold of it. But I realize that his life may be significantly shorter because of his diet.
I do not feed my hens the way I feed my Kyle.

I also have a chicken with vision problems. I hand feed her spinach, which all the girls love. She has problems judging exactly where the spinach is in my hand, but I help her. She does very well with a bowl of layer crumbles mixed with a bit of scratch. So far, so good in terms of her eating and drinking. I've never had a chicken with vision problems before. I keep an eye on her to be sure she is getting what she needs. Other than than her eye problem, she seems healthy and happy.

 

[Foristers]

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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CHICKENS EAT ANYTHING! And they are better than we are about knowing what they can eat. If they don't want it/can't eat it, they won't. If want want them to have an "all-natural diet", or GMO free, or organic, etc.... that's a different story

 

[AChickenBoi]

As long as it is once in a great while and it wasn’t too much pizza (why wouldn’t you keep the pizza as leftovers?? Leftover pizza is soooo good). I would honestly say sure, but don’t make it a habit, and make sure they have some greens/feed/lettuce afterwards to balance out their treat. I will also add that they might have belly aches afterwards and/or diarrhea because of the salt/sodium content.

A little off topic: Your Barred Rock and Sapphire hens remind me a lot of my two girls of the same breed, Olive and Rocky, and I would know very well that those two bottomless pits would happily eat pizza. They may even steal a slice off the table if given enough time to do so lol

 

[Finger Lickin Good]

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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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.

 

[CluckingOnThe45th]

I have literally taken a trash bag full of pastries from a local baker and dumped it out in our run.

I think you're fine

 

[magicdave]

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

Pizza is mostly bread(bad for chickens)cheese(bad for chickens)tomato sauce(too much salt). In my opinion as a poultry breeder that pizza is not a healthy "snack" for chickens. I suppose it won't do much harm once in a while. What cracks me up is that most people treat chickens as if they are vegetarians. Chickens are not vegetarians in fact are much more Carnivorous than vegetarian. I often feed my "girls" left over meat and definitely give them more than a "treat" of meal worms after the first killing frost. Chickens and ducks need "bugs" (animal protein) to maintain gut health. I breed bith chickens and waterfowl. My geese don't need such a large dose of bugs because they are grass eaters.
Table scaps for chickens should be mostly animal protein.

 

[Tonyroo]

Wait pastries are different from pizza, though.

 

[HawthornValleyFarm]

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

Let the haters hate man cause they always do. I like how people are like "I'd never do such a think" but wouldn't think twice about eating it themselves.

 

[TnKWarren]

I would totally feed my chickens and turkeys pizza. I regularly clean out the fridge and don't see the point in wasting food. My birds get a little of everything and are all healthy and happy.