Ultimate Treat

[BWKatz]

Mine love EVERYTHING! Whatever I bring out they all crowd around. And if one catches a bug, they all chase her trying to get it. Seriously I haven't found anything they won't eat.

 

[papeine]

dried meal worms... they love 'em!!!

 

[papeine]

any body know why they can't have potato skins? I read that in a few places. What about sweet potato skins?

 

[TomG]

Cheerios

 

[bigoakhunter]

1. Cherry tomatoes

Followed closely by , 2. Tuna fish

 

[usmcmp]

all great ideas for a new comer thank you

 

[gritsar]

Quote:

& semper fi!

 

[Barry Natchitoches]

Our birds two favorite treats are cold watermelon on a hot summer day, and old raw milk.


Raw milk is alot different from the milk you buy in a store. You can actually keep raw milk out at room temperature for several days or a week or more, and still safely give it to the chickens. In fact, it actually HELPS them stay healthy to do it that way. (Raw milk will significantly increase the productivity of garden soil or pasture land as well, when diluted with water and then sprayed onto the soil.)


The thing is -- you can ONLY do these things with completely RAW, completely un-pasturized milk.


Once you pasturize milk (which all store bought milk is), you kill the beneficial microorganisms in the milk that build up the soil's fertility and the chicken's disease immunity. It also helps the chickens with their calcium levels -- our production reds lay so frequently (almost every day) that their shells get thin and brittle after awhile if we don't give them raw milk at least one day every week.


Anyway, the chickens will lap up the raw milk, even when it is old and has been kept at room temperature for many days.

 

[wyandotte freak]

our birds love squash, tomatoes, and zuchini. we slice the zuchini long ways down the middle and lay them open faced on the ground. they devour everything but the skin.

 

[Ohhhdear]

Quote:
OK, here's the skinny on potato skins.

You can give your chickens potato skins. Raw, cooked, white, yellow, red, doesn't matter. What DOES matter is if the skins are GREEN. NEVER, EVER feed anybody or anything green potato skins or the flesh immediately underneath.

Potatoes are a member of the deadly nightshade/morning glory/tomato family. These plants have a toxic chemical called solanin. When potatoes are exposed to sunlight they concentrate solanin in the skin; that's what makes it green. There is always a bit of this chemical in potatoes, but when the skins are green, it's concentrated and in large doses can cause all sorts of harm, from digestive upsets to birth defects to death.

Solanin is the chemical concentrated in tomato hookworms (those huge nasty green worms birds won't eat). That's why monarch butterfly caterpillars look like tomato hookworms so the birds won't eat them. I heard of a recent case of a mom who told her son to pick off the tomato worms from her plants because she didn't use insecticide in her garden. He missed some and she punished him by making him eat one, thinking "oh, it's just a worm". The poisons concentrated in the tomato hookworm killed the boy.

Sweet potatoes are from an entirely different plant family. The leaves and young shoots are edible and used in salads. They're not the same plant as the yam, though in the USA they're often called the same thing. Sweet potatoes are much healthier for people and animals than regular potatoes.