Red wine for your chickens??

[BayCityBabe]

Vinegar and wine are both used in other countries as digestifs - a little something after dinner to settle your tummy. Back when I was in the food business, I was shocked to learn that there are bottles of vinegar that sell for $100+ They were served in a little shot glass after a gourmet meal. Myself, I give the Bragg's to the chooks & save the vino for hubby & me.

 

[mountaintopchicken]

Wow, I've been away all day and this grew by 3 pages!

So, I've done a little more research. As far as tolerance for ethanol, the alcohol in wine, goes:

Ethanol intake in the chicken and its effect on body temperature and hypothalamic serotonin

Male strain broiler chickens 13 days to 3 weeks old, were offered water or 1, 3, 5, or 10% ethanol solutions (v/v) in four experiments. The chickens tolerated up to 5% ethanol solutions without significant changes in total fluid intake or body weight. With 10% ethanol, body weight and fluid intake were significantly decreased in comparison with the other treatments. Solutions of 5 and 10% ethanol lowered skin and rectal temperature and solutions of 3 and 5% (10% not measured) caused significant elevations in blood ethanol concentrations

So they can tolerate up to 5% ethanol, which is a pretty strong concentration, since straight wine would be around 12%. My little chookmix of a couple of tablespoons per gallon is nowhere near that. I wouldn't give them wine thinking it was going to warm them up though, since higher concentrations lowered skin and rectal temp - I wonder which lucky research technician got to take all of those chicken rectal temperatures?

 

[Chicken Salad]

Quote:
THANK you.

But is this like the lime in Corona's? My friend in Mexico laughs because the reason the lime is put in there is because it keeps away the bugs. NOT because of any great flavor enhancement.

Would wine in their water keep it from freezing? (lower freeze point in alcohol...I can't remember from high school chem....)

 

[MissPrissy]

That would have to be a lot of wine in there LOL May as well give them a shot of vodka

 

[wendy]

Quote:
That would give new meaning to drunken chicken

 

[ixnay]

For what it's worth: worms come from mommy worms - not from milk. Especially not from pasteurized milk. I don't think there's anything magical about raw milk (tuberculosis, anyone?) or about goat's milk (yeah, I know that opinions vary on that one), but chickens seem to really like milk protein: cheese, yogurt, sour milk, whey, whatever. While Miss Prissy has, doubtless, far more chicken experience than I, I have seen no adverse effects on my girls from feeding them curdled (with vinegar) grocery story milk. My suspicion is that protein is protein, and there is a genetic predisposition to think that protein is good food.

Among the suggestions that I have seen here are to feed excess/broken/deformed eggs back to the chickens (cooked). If I were to have particular qualms about what kind of protein to feed my birds, I would find feeding eggs a whole lot more shudder-inducing than feeding milk products. In fact, I have no such qualms. The grocery store milk here in Maine is, for the most part, artificial-hormone free.

Wine? I don't know. The amounts being discussed here are infinitesimal. Almost homeopathic. I suspect that the catnip that I give to my cats would be arguably more detrimental.

 

[MissPrissy]

Once the milk has curdled the lactose has changed. Chickens are lactose intolerant and large amount of it will give them troubles.

 

[greyfields]

I may be guilty of sharing some red wine with my goose, Olive, during a party one night. She took readily to it. But, like most geese, she didn't make half a mess of it!

 

[mountaintopchicken]

A wine imbibing goose? Horrors! I find geese to be quite wacky enough without wine to help them out.

The amounts being discussed here are infinitesimal. Almost homeopathic.

Well, I'm being pretty conservative. First, wine is expensive. Second, I don't want to jump willy-nilly into pouring lotsa wine into them, especially during our first major cold snap of the season. I value my biddies too much to do anything rash. But if you look at the thread on the French chicken forum that I linked to at the beginning of this thread, some people seem to be saying that they give a lot more than I have been giving. There are varying amounts - the google translator garbles things a bit, but one person mentioned half water, half wine. There is one (garbled, translated) post that says, "but I put 1 glass in their paté 1 time per week". Er... I'm guessing that "pate" really mean not a gourmet appetizer but a wet mash. But who knows. Maybe the French are in the habit of serving both pate and wine to their hens.

The following youtube video was also linked to on the French forum. Let this be a warning to you all about what could happen if you let your chickens party too much:

Youtube Video​

 

[MissPrissy]

Goodness. That's some chicken.