opinions on feeding chickens chicken meat and bones?

[SSTupperware]

The leftovers will atract vermin thats for sure...

 

[Headgear]

I've had several occasions where a hawk or coon had killed a chicken and left most of it lay in the chicken yard and in no time it gets mobbed by the other chickens and there is nothing left but skin and bones. Death is part of life on the farm, and I guess cannibalism is too if you have chickens. Sooner or later somebody is going to get sick or get injured and start bleeding and the others are going to try to eat him. If you look at the way people behave on the highway you have to wonder how far off we are from the chickens.

I wouldn't worry too much about feeding chicken to chickens if you have a good clean cheap local source. If it were that bad for them, they would have been extinct a long time ago.

 

[RobynD]

Is there any concern about the chickens swallowing a bone if you give them the carcas?

 

[ChickenJerk]

Is there any concern about the chickens swallowing a bone if you give them the carcas?

No

 

[3ChickensNADuck]

I like to feed my hens leftover scraps, and I use to feel bad and separate out the chicken meat. But than got lazy and started feeding them everything. It's not there favorite meat, but they still prefer eating it over their normal feed.

 

[tdbrueggen]

I'll revive this thread. I was thinking not so much about the chicken meat scraps, but perhaps the guts and other waste from butchering chickens. I'd like to keep the liver, gizzard, heart (if big enough) and maybe even the cods if he were a big guy, just for fun. But what about the intestine, kidneys, stomach, lungs, etc? What about the feathers/feet/head? What about contents of the crop/gizzard?

For simplicity, we'll bar the issue of disease from the food source. This would all be chicken scraps from my own backyard flock, and would be offered fresh on butcher day, or frozen and fed back later so spoilage was not a concern. Barring also the squeamish comments. I'm asking purely from a dietary standpoint.

I'm just looking towards removing any and all inefficiencies in my own life. Perhaps if I ran it all through a grinder, or boiled down to a mash it would seem less "wrong" as some say when considering feeding chicken scraps to chickens. I personally have no problems with this, but my wife might. It might make me shiver a little if I saw one of my hens pecking at the bloody head of one of her former sisters, and then sneering at me in an oddly satisfied manner...

If I can't feed it back to the chickens, I suppose I'd feed it to fish, and as a last resort, just bury it up in the compost pile. But again, if I can capture that energy in the rawest sense possible, that would be ideal. Maybe let the chickens pick the meat off, then grind the bones/feathers down into a liquid sort of soup and use it for fertilizer on the garden.

I've had this same sort of conceptual thought with raising my own fish for food. Why would one not want to grind up all the fish waste and feed it back to the fish? It just makes sense to me.

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

I'll revive this thread. I was thinking not so much about the chicken meat scraps, but perhaps the guts and other waste from butchering chickens. I'd like to keep the liver, gizzard, heart (if big enough) and maybe even the cods if he were a big guy, just for fun. But what about the intestine, kidneys, stomach, lungs, etc? What about the feathers/feet/head? What about contents of the crop/gizzard?

For simplicity, we'll bar the issue of disease from the food source. This would all be chicken scraps from my own backyard flock, and would be offered fresh on butcher day, or frozen and fed back later so spoilage was not a concern. Barring also the squeamish comments. I'm asking purely from a dietary standpoint.

I'm just looking towards removing any and all inefficiencies in my own life. Perhaps if I ran it all through a grinder, or boiled down to a mash it would seem less "wrong" as some say when considering feeding chicken scraps to chickens. I personally have no problems with this, but my wife might. It might make me shiver a little if I saw one of my hens pecking at the bloody head of one of her former sisters, and then sneering at me in an oddly satisfied manner...

If I can't feed it back to the chickens, I suppose I'd feed it to fish, and as a last resort, just bury it up in the compost pile. But again, if I can capture that energy in the rawest sense possible, that would be ideal. Maybe let the chickens pick the meat off, then grind the bones/feathers down into a liquid sort of soup and use it for fertilizer on the garden.

I've had this same sort of conceptual thought with raising my own fish for food. Why would one not want to grind up all the fish waste and feed it back to the fish? It just makes sense to me.

We take our Cornish X to be processed, and I have them save all the gizzards, necks, etc. in a big bag. I make stock from most of it (and feed the boiled-out bits of meat that remain from making stock) and I've been known to feed the organ meats raw. Just remember that you don't want them to have huge amounts of it at any one time, as it will mess up their nutrient levels. I save it in a bag in the freezer and feed it as treats during moult.

And I'm with Fred's Hens--have you ever seen chickens catch and eat a mouse? We don't have ANY mice in our coop. It's the safest place to store bags of feed.

I personally wouldn't feed the heads. And they won't use the feathers or bones so those will just make a big mess out in the pasture.

 

[tdbrueggen]

I personally wouldn't feed the heads. And they won't use the feathers or bones so those will just make a big mess out in the pasture.

Haha, I wouldn't feed the bloody heads, that was just joke. I just had that comical visual in my head so I figured I'd toss it in.

I have considered running the larger bones/feathers through a garbage disposal more or less to grind it all down to a pulp and then freeze or dehydrate it in pellets. I think it were in that form, they would eat it. The feathers have a lot of protein (so I've read). And the bones for sure should have some much wanted calcium.

I wonder if there is a systematic approach to be taken. For example, boil the bones to stock, then feed out the meaty bones. Let the birds pick them over, then collect the bones to be ground down to bone meal for a the garden, or mix the pulp with other meat scraps to make up pellets or mash of some sort.

You know it really is sad when you look around and see how much is wasted in our society because people just don't want to take the time to be more useful of the resources we have. The stats are staggering, how much food is thrown away. I am equally guilty, but as of late have been making more conscious efforts to be more thorough in my use of stuff. As an engineer, the desire for efficiency burns in me (as I chat on forums at work...)

 

[Aphrael]

I do feed the offal from butchering to mine. The softer bits they gobble up but the larger harder parts (bones, feathers, heads) get left behind. I dump it all in the compost so it all gets used up sooner or later in some form. But I am intrigued by your suggestions for grinding up the remains and giving it to them. It seems like they might be able to utilize a higher percentage of the waste in that form. They can digest oyster shell for calcium, I wonder if they couldn't also digest ground up bones and utilize the calcium (and protein) in those just as well. I will have to try this as soon as I can get hold of a grinder.

 

[LTygress]

It's thanksgiving today. The turkey and ham got carved up pretty well. The remaining carcass and ham bone went out to the pen.

It's dark outside. But I'm pretty sure by the time I make it back out in the morning, the bones will be all that is left! And it's healthy for them. It gives them extra nutrients, which never hurts. But they probably won't eat the bones themselves unless they are ground up into smaller bits somehow.