Unshelled prawns?

[kristenm1975]

I was at a very nice market yesterday and decided to ask the meat department if they had any good scraps I could feed to my girls. I've begun feeding them a nice hot mash in the mornings, generally oatmeal or some other cereal, with tuna fish and veggies mixed in, and have begun to see that the cost adds up too fast with canned tuna at $1 each for the cheapest.

The butchers were super sweet, although a little startled at the request. Its one of those chic little markets in the middle of the city (Seattle) and I guess they hadn't heard that many of us are keeping chickens in our back yards.

They gave me about 3-4 pounds of nice steak and some huge prawns, heads removed, shells on. I chopped all the steak up into little bits, but just tossed the prawns out as they were. I thought the girls would go nuts over them, and they did play many a game of keep-away with them, but I think they may have gotten mostly just left on the floor of the run. Should I have cut them up and are they bad for them as they are?

My reasoning was that if they eat oyster shell and gravel for goodness sake, surely they can manage a little shell. It might even entertain them a bit, I thought.

What do you think??

Thanks!

 

[eeiko321]

i have fed them prawns...........the whole thing unpeeled and head attatched.....

they have no problems at all..... they eat the tail too.

but based from what your describing in your thread...........
i think you feed it too much treats..............

i did that mistake by feeding it daily with treats and now I'm stuffed.........

they HATEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE chicken feed for god sake
and absolutely will NOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT eat it...

they wait all day till they get their treats...... and one time i tried starving them and they went 2 days without food ..cause i guess they cant stand chicken feed anymore.


so yeah, now when theres no treats i seen them peck at their own droppings rather than the feed provided in the feeder


to me this is a disaster........

 

[JennsPeeps]

I've given my chooks prawn shells, which they really like.

 

[coffeelady3]

Mine LOVE the scrap bits. (shells, legs, tails) They've never had the good stuff...

 

[showy21]

My chickens love shrimp shells, and I have also fed them cleaned fish carcasses. I am not sure I understand the whole "treat" concept. They have their layer mash in the feeder and I throw veggie scraps et al into their run area, every day, and they wolf down everything. I sell my eggs to a restaurant and the chef raves about them. The only vegetable they aren't interested in is the allium family: onions, leeks, shallots.

 

[greathorse]

So just gotta ask steak and shrimp and you fed it to the chickens? What I want to know what was your dinner? LOL


I will be stopping in sometime