is there any way to help chickens to develop taste for bell peppers?

[mtinney]

Our chickens never eat or peck bell peppers and we are getting lots of them (both red and green) in discarded produce - they all become worm food. Bell peppers and root veg are about only things they won't touch. There are plenty of people at BYC who say their chickens love bell peppers. Is there a way to help chickens to develop taste for certain produce such as bell peppers?

Bell peppers are from the nightshade family and not good for chickens.

 

[Judy Todd]

Do you cut the peppers open? I would expect the chickens to like the seeds better than the flesh, so cutting the peppers open will let them get to the seeds.

About the flesh of the peppers--I see several people already suggested cutting it into small pieces or using a blender to make it easy to eat.

Also, do be realistic about how much of what you are expecting your chickens to eat. Each chicken is only able to eat a certain amount of food in a day. And nutritionally, a bell pepper is not the same as a complete chicken feed. So even if your chickens do decide they like bell peppers, they may not eat as many peppers are you are able to bring home.

Root vegetables would have a similar texture problem: they are just hard for chickens to eat. You could consider cooking the root vegetables until they are soft. Yes, that's a lot of bother, so just leaving them to compost in the chicken run might make more sense. And if the composting things attract bugs and breed worms, then the chickens can eat the bugs and worms, so at least you get some benefit from them that way.

Have any of you considered oven roasting your peppers. I roast my crooked carrots and my girls gobble them up. Tried just tossing them from the veg garden,no luck. Oven roasting is so easy, use about 350 and set a timer for about 35 minutes or so. Chickens do not care if they are a bit overcooked.

 

[CanadaEh]

Why not can them or something instead of trying to get your chickens to eat something they don’t want to??

not when they come from the green bin

Have any of you considered oven roasting your peppers. I roast my crooked carrots and my girls gobble them up. Tried just tossing them from the veg garden,no luck. Oven roasting is so easy, use about 350 and set a timer for about 35 minutes or so. Chickens do not care if they are a bit overcooked.

too much trouble

Unexpected update on this: just released 3 week old chicks couple of days ago into a partitioned adult birds run - the chicks went crazy about red peppers pecking them whole and pecking split green peppers from inside. This is a 3rd generation hatch and it seems each new generation gets hungrier for produce and more varieties of produce:

1st gen (from purchased hatching eggs) - lettuce, sweet corn, tomatoes
2nd gen (from collected eggs) - all the above plus green onions, zucchinis, squashes, green beans
3rd gen (from collected eggs of 2nd gen) - all the above plus bell peppers