Vegan diet for chickens - is it unhealthy?

[OfWolvesAndHen]

Someone I know has a "rescue" cornish/leghorn cross that they stole off a slaughter truck at 6 weeks. She's now 2 years old and poor girl doesn't look healthy at all. She is fed exclusively greens and (previously) her own eggs. She recieves no commercial feed or supplementation. She is fed 3 small cat bowls of mixed greens per day, and when she was still laying that would also include one boiled egg with shell.

Her feathers are dull and scrappy, she's bony and underweight, still has down feathers on her tail, has an almost yellow pallored face, and did not lay her first egg until nearly 2 years old. She would take up to ten hours to lay and would act extremely painful and agitated during the process, before her owner gave hormone implants to stop laying. Citing "speciesism", the owner will not see a vet.

The owner insists that fully vegan diets are healthiest for chickens, but I largely suspect this bird's poor health and failure to thrive is due to how she's being fed. She lives indoors so she gets no forage. Is it possible her poor health is just because of poor genetics (she was a broiler heading to slaughter, after all)? Are vegan diets sustainable for chickens? And if not, how can I convince them otherwise?

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

Citing "speciesism", the owner will not see a vet.

I really hope you are joking.
If you are not then they best thing you can do is to cull this poor bird. To answer you question; Vegan diets are possible but not economically feasible. Some old chicken recipes actually called for animal protein!

 

[kcult]

Someone I know has a "rescue" cornish/leghorn cross that they stole off a slaughter truck at 6 weeks. She's now 2 years old and poor girl doesn't look healthy at all. She is fed exclusively greens and (previously) her own eggs. She recieves no commercial feed or supplementation. She is fed 3 small cat bowls of mixed greens per day, and when she was still laying that would also include one boiled egg with shell.

Her feathers are dull and scrappy, she's bony and underweight, still has down feathers on her tail, has an almost yellow pallored face, and did not lay her first egg until nearly 2 years old. She would take up to ten hours to lay and would act extremely painful and agitated during the process, before her owner gave hormone implants to stop laying. Citing "speciesism", the owner will not see a vet.

The owner insists that fully vegan diets are healthiest for chickens, but I largely suspect this bird's poor health and failure to thrive is due to how she's being fed. She lives indoors so she gets no forage. Is it possible her poor health is just because of poor genetics (she was a broiler heading to slaughter, after all)? Are vegan diets sustainable for chickens? And if not, how can I convince them otherwise?

This makes my head hurt.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

No. Vegan diets are not suitable for chickens, they are omnivores. Vegan diets are also not suitable for pigs, dogs, cats or.... people. This person who owns this chicken sounds like the sort of person who would feed a cat a Vegan diet and wonder why they're sick.

Commercial feeds without any animal ingredients could be considered vegan though I suppose and they are carefully made to meet chicken requirements at least for commercial lifespans of 12months - 2 years. And should form the main diet of all chickens unless much time effort and expense has gone into other options.

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

Someone I know has a "rescue" cornish/leghorn cross that they stole off a slaughter truck at 6 weeks. She's now 2 years old and poor girl doesn't look healthy at all. She is fed exclusively greens and (previously) her own eggs. She recieves no commercial feed or supplementation. She is fed 3 small cat bowls of mixed greens per day, and when she was still laying that would also include one boiled egg with shell.

Her feathers are dull and scrappy, she's bony and underweight, still has down feathers on her tail, has an almost yellow pallored face, and did not lay her first egg until nearly 2 years old. She would take up to ten hours to lay and would act extremely painful and agitated during the process, before her owner gave hormone implants to stop laying. Citing "speciesism", the owner will not see a vet.

The owner insists that fully vegan diets are healthiest for chickens, but I largely suspect this bird's poor health and failure to thrive is due to how she's being fed. She lives indoors so she gets no forage. Is it possible her poor health is just because of poor genetics (she was a broiler heading to slaughter, after all)? Are vegan diets sustainable for chickens? And if not, how can I convince them otherwise?

Absolutely not. Chickens are omnivores that eat a wide range of things, living and otherwise, in the wild, and should be fed a diet that provides both animal products and plant products. Feeding them a vegan diet is like feeding wolves nothing but plant matter -- the poor creature will suffer declining and poor health as a result because it is not made to survive on such a diet.

 

[Battlepants]

Sounds like this girl needs to be stolen again, put in with some other older girls for socialization and fed a proper diet of flockraiser while getting those claws into the dirt for eating some bugs.

As for the vegan side of things. There's nothing wrong with making dietary choices for yourself, but don't force said choices onto animals if it goes against their biology. There are plenty of pets that thrive on pure veggie diets, but chickens ain't one of them.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

This makes my head hurt.

That is how I was feeling when I read this!

 

[HollowOfWisps]

So this acquaintance "rescued" a chicken from slaughter only to forcefully ensure it spends the rest of it's days malnourished with an improper diet, sick, indoors when they should be outside and alone with no flock mates? Sounds like the chicken would have had a better go of things staying on the slaughter truck.

Edit: I also wanted to add that for the possible argument regarding some old recipes that do not have animal protein, those chickens still were not fed a solely vegan diet. They would spend their entire day foraging for bugs and more often than not at the end of the day the chickens along with other farm animals would get fed table scraps.

 

[Brooks_]

before her owner gave hormone implants to stop laying. Citing "speciesism", the owner will not see a vet

So, owner thinks speciesism is bad but will use hormone implants on the animal? What's the term for that?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

So, owner thinks speciesism is bad but will use hormone implants on the animal? What's the term for that?

Also where did they get the implant if they won't go to rhe vet?