It is ABSOLUTELY FALSE that rice will hurt yer chickens.

[JimnJanet]

Rice raw or cooked is ground up in the crop jist like any other food that yer chickens or any other bird eats and will NOT SWELL in thier bellys and hurt or kill them.
You can find many facts to prove this on the web, Here is jist one FYI.

http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/birdrice.asp

 

[M@M@2four]

yep! Mine LOVE cooked cool rice. It's like a feather frenzy when I toss it to them! It's also good for sick or thinner chickens that you want to fatten up a bit!

 

[Ron]

I have bought un hulled rice from local rice mills and it is one of my hens' favorite treats!

 

[hooligan]

Yup, just another urban myth...they did that on Mythbusters if I am not mistaken.

 

[Whistling Badger]

Keep them away from the alcaseltzer, though.

T

 

[prariechiken]

Rice is a mainstay of poultry people in other parts of the world. In the far east, you don't feed em rice, they don't eat....

 

[lovemychicks9]

One of the reasons that we suggest not feeding to much rice is because in white hulled rice there is not much in the way of any nutrition for them. In the brown and wild is better and more nutrion in it. A little white rice as a treat won't hurt them as long as they are getting the proper nutrition from the feed also. Feeding just rice in Japan and China the yolks are not as big and much less yellow then here, my nephew lives in China and has for the last 3 years and teaches there and they raise chickens where they live and he says that they also feed vegetables and fish and fish meal and worms and mealworms to them not just a rice diet.

 

[prariechiken]

True...just like here, if you don't feed them a balanced diet you won't have healthy birds. Was really kinda eluding more to those raising the fowl, you know with the rice shortage and all. and the big wholesalers here setting limits on quantity an individual can buy at one time...

 

[dlhunicorn]

Quote:
FYI...sorry, but nothing is "ground up" in the crop ...The crop stores food temporarily and allows food to be (somewhat) softened (but not digested) before it enters the "stomach".....
http://www.poultryhub.org/index.php/Digestive_system
(an excellent article >here below some excerpts:
"....Summary of digestion and metabolism
The utilisation of nutrients from the diet is a key element in the normal functioning of the animal. The avian digestive system is a simple system and consequently the diet must be of good quality and consist of easily digested ingredients if the bird is to perform at the level required .....

.....factors affect the rate of movement of the food through the digestive system with a meal of normal food taking approximately 4 hours to pass through in the case of young stock, 8 hours in the case of laying hens and 12 hours for broody hens. Intact, hard grains take longer to digest than the cracked grain and, quite often some whole grain will pass through unchanged.......

Food storage
The food is delivered into the crop for storage after the first few boli have passed into the proventriculus. The crop is quite distensable and will hold a large amount of undigested food that is then moved on as required by the proventriculus (glandular stomach)......

Enzyme action
After ingestion, the food is mixed with saliva and mucous from the mouth and oesophagus and these secretions thoroughly moisten the food. The enzyme amylase, which is produced by the salivary and oesophageal glands and found in the saliva and mucous, can now commence to breakdown the complex carbohydrates. However, the amount of enzyme action at this stage is minimal and the first major enzyme activity takes place in the proventriculus and in the gizzard. ..............

....Breaking the food particles
The gizzard is a very powerful organ with the function of physically breaking the food particles into smaller sizes to make the work of the enzymes easier. At the same time the enzymes previously released into the food with the saliva and by the proventriculus are thoroughly mixed into the food thus improving their opportunity to carry out their work. This breaking and mixing function of the gizzard is enhanced by the presence of insoluble grit such as stones....."

 

[Davaroo]

Rice will hurt or kill chickens? Where DO these notions come from? Sometimes the information avalanche works to our detriment...

I always marvel at our willingness to accept and embrace any notion. In fact, it has been called it the folly of our current age.

It is true that there is little but carbonaceous feed value in rice. Carbs, in other words, and rice alone is not a good chicken feed. The same can be said for corn, also pretty weak by itself.
But mixed in proper proportion with other things, it can suffice to fuel a cluckers physical body. That is the essence of chicken feed, after all: Balance

Rice falls in somewhere between corn and wheat in energy value and was recommended as an element for feed mixes in LA, according to Morley Jull.*
Much of that recommendation had to do with local availability, of course.


*Successful Poultry Management, 1943, McGraw-Hill/