How to feed meat.

[jcinadr]

I read a few threads about feeding "road kill". Likewise I have read posts on pressure cooking bones to soften them.

Am curious what they generally will not eat - and what to do to get them to eat more completely. I really do not want to go outside and see buzzards in my chicken run eating the leftovers. Several specifics-should critters be skinned, opened up, inviserated - or do the little mini Rex's do just fine themselves. Likewise, how processed does fish need to be?

Sorry, but just imagine it would be karma involved with feeding a coon to a chicken, instead of how that normally plays out.

 

[carolb5]

I would feed it in smaller chunks instead of the whole animal. Portion and freeze the rest. We butcher our own meat and grind and freeze the scraps. We live in bear, bobcat, mountain lion area. I want the meat cleaned up and not a draw for predators. We also give them the trimmed bones and let them pick them clean. No idea about fish.
Carol

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I read a few threads about feeding "road kill". Likewise I have read posts on pressure cooking bones to soften them.

Am curious what they generally will not eat - and what to do to get them to eat more completely. I really do not want to go outside and see buzzards in my chicken run eating the leftovers. Several specifics-should critters be skinned, opened up, inviserated - or do the little mini Rex's do just fine themselves. Likewise, how processed does fish need to be?

Sorry, but just imagine it would be karma involved with feeding a coon to a chicken, instead of how that normally plays out.

Rest assured that if it is meat a chicken will eat it.

However do not over do a good thing because stuff like maggots can ingest the Botulism toxin and pass it on to your birds. This is definitely not a good thing.

When I had a couple of hundred game hens on free range I would tie up a road killed rabbet etc by its back legs and make a slit in the body or belly to get the hens started. By nightfall you could hardly find a hair of the hare remaining. I also had my hens completely consume a skunk that I shot in a steel trap and planned to dispose of the next morning when the smell died down. Buy the next morning the hens had ate the whole skunk, even the smell, I swear. Well I did find a 50 cent piece size of the skunk's skull less the hair and skin but that was all.

A cotton tail rabbet weighs about 2 1/4 pounds so 2.25 pounds times 16 ounces = 36 ounces divided by 200 hens = 0.18 ounces of rabbet per hen, not a meat feast by any means. I really didn't know how many hens were loose on the yard but I did know that I had 200 hens or more total counting those in pens and runs.

As to how much road kill or meat to feed you'll have to work that out yourself, but a skunk will tip the scales somewhere at 5-8 pounds so I would say somewhere between a rabbet and a skunk.

I've seen one of my 1/2 grown chickens eat a garter snake head first that I would say was 15 inches long. I have also fed them left over fish bait minnows that were still flopping around, they also went down head first as do most mice. I never saw a chicken harmed from eating either one. Hope this helps

 

[SavageDestiny]

I feed raw to my dogs, so I always have meat lying around. I give the girls bones the dogs can't have, with most of the meat removed. Just toss it out in the run and let them have them for a day or so.

 

[jcinadr]

Stupid question, but you mentioned feeding your chickens rabbits. I always heard not to hunt rabbits until after the first freeze due to parasites. Is that an issue? I guess I might need to research how often to worm... aaarrgggghhh more research.

 

[donrae]

They'll eat anything that doesn't eat them first

Larger bones they don't eat. They'll strip them clean, but I have turkey carcass bones lying around out there until they decompose or get buried.

fish heads and guts seem to be pretty individual. Some of the hens will go for them like I do for Ben and Jerry's ice cream, some just ignore them. You just learn from trial and error how much they'll eat at a time. A time or two of going out to leftover fish heads will teach you to cut back, let me tell you!

Leftover cooked fish seems to go down fast and easy. I've never had fishy tasting eggs.

I never underestimate the power of a bird's beak. They can easily tear off pieces of meat from a larger chunk, so I don't chop or dice meat. Organ meats seem to be a big treat....watching a hen with a goat kidney play keep-away from the rest of the flock while trying to get a chance to actually eat some of it was entertainment for me for a good 30 minutes!

 

[Kazfam]

They love chicken...and beef, and pork, and bugs, and worms, and grubs....