Sugar???? also, what can't chickens eat????

[elmo]

Chickens can't taste much of anything. According to the Cornell Hanbook of Bird Biology, chickens have 24 (count 'em) tastebuds. By way of comparison, humans have over 10,000 taste buds.

I think chickens learn and remember things they've eaten before. My flock will go for the swiss chard before they'll go for strawberries or a canteloupe rind, because greens are a daily treat and fruit an occasional one. One day I brought in a honeydew melon rind and the chickens all ran away from it in terror. But when I put it in a dish that I feed them treats in, several of the braver ones ventured a peck or two, and then the whole flock piled on.

Simply as a matter of nutrition, I don't think you would want to feed chickens processed foods high in sugar since those are also likely to be low in valuable nutrients. Salt is another thing to watch out for, since birds generally don't excrete it efficiently.

 

[kla37]

I guess there a lot of things my chickens can't taste. A mexican friend of mine suggested I feed them chopped habanero peppers to keep them healthy. I do! They love them, especially the seeds. I have never wormed them, and my buddy says it's because of the peppers. That's one of the things they fed their chickens on his farm in Mexico. He thinks it's so funny how I am so paranoid about my chickens! His family never had a coop for their chickens. They live in the mountains of Mexico and have mango trees and other fruit trees, and their chickens just live in the orchard with a little lean to to lay eggs in. They have dogs to watch their animals.

 

[mchl]

that is interesting about the habenero peppers, I should not have to many worms either because i love em

 

[kla37]

My friend also told me that he thinks that's why Mexicans don't get sick from the water there. They are used to it, and they eat a lot of really hot peppers. Whenever he goes back to visit, he says he always gets sick for awhile, but then gets better on his own. Another interesting aside, he thinks chickens in american grocery stores are weird. Like "small turkeys" he says. They never had cornish cross birds on his farm, just regular old-fashioned mutts.

 

[hansolo]

Very interesting!
24 taste buds and hot peppers!
but why do they prefer certain food, for example, grapes? Is it because of the color or shape or taste?!

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Once upon a time fresh sweet or sour milk was a common poultry feed. Many farms had milking animals and it was pretty common to feed it to the hens when they had excess. You can still find ceramic poultry milk feeders on places like E-Bay. All of my poultry/livestock nutrition books discuss the feed value of various milk products.

Milk isn't fed much any more mostly because most folks don't keep their own dairy animals anymore so it would make for an expensive feed to buy it.

 

[Daphne16]

Quote:
The process of making yogurt and many cheeses remove lactose. Dh is lactose intolerant.

 

[hansolo]

I did a bit home work:
Yes of course chickens have taste receptors, including that of sugar, even fruit flies do. But they have limited taste buds and their world of taste is different than ours:

Birds have an interesting sense of taste. They have taste receptors like other
animals, and their general structure is essentially the same as that in other vertebrates.
The starling and chicken have a few dozen taste buds as compared to 25000 for the
cow. The chicken has all the taste buds at the back of the tongue with the front half
of the tongue highly cornified. In the chicken, the taste buds are so far back that it
would appear that by the time it can taste something, it is too late to change its
mind about swallowing it.

Most birds do not respond to what we describe as sweet. The parrot and some
of the fruit-eating birds do, but the domestic and song birds do not respond to sugar
as do humans.

Birds responses to sour are different from ours. They are more tolerant of
sour. Chickens will take acidic fluids down to a pH of 1.5,

Birds don't share our world for bitter. Sucro octaacetate tastes bitter to humans
but chickens will drink it indifferently. On the other hand, most of the common birds
will reject quinine solutions. Birds are very sensitive to texture of feed, yet indifferent
to the viscosity produced by sugar in solution.

Saltiness is an interesting situation. The bird's response is different from that
generally encountered with mammals.

Some people have suggested that wild birds and chickens have periodically been
killed by accidental salt intoxication; such a suggestion usually has no basis in fact. A
chicken, if it has adequate water available, can tolerate the equivalent of your having
a tumbler full of salt four times a day. They have an enormous capacity to handle salt,
providing water is available continuously.

Sweet, salty, sour and bitter are not
meaningful classifications for birds. The problem is further complicated by the bird's
water sense. To us, water is wet and tasteless; to a bird water has a distinct taste. Water
in itself is a strong stimulus for the bird. Therefore pure flavors tested in water

Reference:
Wildlife Damage Management, Internet Center for
Bird Control Seminars Proceedings
University of Nebraska - Lincoln Year 1970
THE CHEMICAL SENSES OF BIRDS
Morley R. Kare
University of Pennsylvania​

 

[hansolo]

and here is bird and hot peppers:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns...them-to-eat-vast-amounts-and-spread-the-seeds

 

[kla37]

Quote:
Great article, thanks! So, if we perceive hot peppers as painful, am I sadistic to love spicy food????