Is there such a thing as too much bread?

[keyt1969]

Recently we picked up a very large supply of out of date bread from a bread store. This helps since a few months ago we lost some of our income. We have 60-some chickens, 22 ducks and 2 rabbits. I'm curious, can they have too much bread? They still get their regular feed (scratch and layer), the bread is just more of a filler. Can feeding it once a day be bad or should I spread it out more?

 

[jjthink]

Of course it depends on how much bread each bird eats. If it it's not high quality multigrain bread it's really just junk filler and I wouldn't let it make up more than a very small % of their daily diet.

JJ

 

[keyt1969]

Well since there's so many birds, I can't exactly judge how much each bird gets individually. Most of it is multigrain bread and they still get their usual scratch/layer mix.

 

[jjthink]

As with any being really...small amounts of most anything are relatively harmless but significant amounts, harmful. Most birds will (like many of us!) opt for the fun food over the nutritionally superior but boring food and so could come up short if they have the opportunity for too much of the fun but inferior stuff. Not knowing amounts, we can't help here but if each bird is eating just a fraction of a slice of bread daily that shouldn't be dramatically compromising.

JJ

 

[rancher hicks]

Yes they can have to much bread. I would limit it but you can let it dry out and that will help it to last. You could mix it with the feed if you have some milk and make a mash.

Just make sure you have lots of grit, to help them digest it.

 

[Cindiloohoo]

Bread contains sodium, sodium is not good for chickens, so I'd say yes, they can have too much. I feed my birds breads, but in limited ammounts. Each birds probably gets the equivalent of 1/5 of a slice of regular white bread, and that is only about 24 mcg of sodium. I haven't noticed any ill effects, but am cautious to not give them more than they can metabolize in 24 hours time. That has been my cut off since allowing them to have bread. I don't know how much it would take to harm them

 

[Judy]

You mentioned your usual scratch/layer mix. What percent of each? Scratch should only be a treat, it is like candy to chickens, and does not have enough protein and little vitamins and minerals; layer is the complete feed. If you add very much bread at all you might be seriously impinging on their nutritional needs. There was a thread on hre recently about people feeding wild ducks a lot of bread, and how harmful and even fatal this can be.

 

[keyt1969]

Quote:
Actually, it's times like this that we got the bread. We're all out of scratch so we just have the layer and we need to spread out the feed.

This brings up an interesting thing. On the Michigan thread, we had a debate over feeding scratch over layer. I tried feeding just layer last year and everyone stopped laying. Not sure if it was the change or molting. We're somewhat new at this. We grew up around chickens and ducks but we've only been doing it ourselves for about a year.