Vegetarian chickens...What?!

[Wolf-Kim]

Quote:
I would imagine that quite a bit of the protein in animal feeds come from animal products. It would be my guess anyway.

"Vegetarian Fed" makes quite a bit more sense to me.

-Kim

 

[hooligan]

I feed my chickens Purina Layena which has no animal products and is vegeratian. I do however suppliment their diet with worrms (the bf digs huge holes in the yard to find them for them! and we buy some) and we have a bunch of left over shrimp in our freezer from our non-vegetarian days that gets cooked with noodles for the chickens.
I would never feed them a pellet that had animal products in it but I would not deny them the inscets and bugs they find naturally.

 

[CarriBrown]

Quote:
If he were really vegan, he wouldn't even eat the eggs!

Sounds like a nut!
I can see not feeding them feed with by-products, but chickens eat bugs, worms, mice, etc. natually. To make your own decision (I'm not going to eat meat, etc) is totally fine, but an animal would not naturally make that decision for itself. I think it's silly for people to have "vegetarian" pets.

 

[Lobzi]

My Chickie loves bugs. She also loves cooked carrots and eats greens growing out side. Im no expert but I dont think chickens prefer man-made food over what they can forage for.

 

[Buster]

I wouldn't even want to eat eggs from vegetarian fed chickens. I think they need the animal protein too. Chickens are omnivores and too many people are off their rockers with things like this. Do vegetarians think that their chickens don't eat bugs that wander through their coop or mice or snakes or any number of other things? Good luck with that.

 

[greyfields]

Quote:
The protein meal in most chicken feed is a combination of meat meal (allegedly porcine) and seed meal.

The Purina "Sunfresh" lines contain no animal products, so you can say your hens are "vegetarian fed".

 

[dacjohns]

I forget that you readers can't read my mind. I wasn't promoting a vegetarian diet for chickens nor was I thinking that it was a good idea. Oh never mind, there are too many intertwined posts and what I think may have been a response to me in reality may not have been

I'll have to check my feed bags but it seems like most, if not all, claim to have to added animal byproducts or whatever. I was taking that to mean it didn't have beef, poultry, (pork?), etc. added to it like it seems is happening in many feedlots. One way Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), is probably spread.

I have a bag of Sunfresh but my chickens are definately not vegetarians. They spend too much time running around the yard.

Bottom line for me right now. Chickens are ominivores just like humans. If fed a vegetarian diet they need some sort of supplements or controlled diet to ensure nutrional requirements are met. Chickens will also need a controlled environment to prevent them from eating that stray bit of live animal protein that comes their way. Caged chicken factory is what comes to mind. Vegetarian fed is better tha pure vegetarian. More humane and more natural.

Read the label.

 

[d.k]

* I know how easily confused I am, but, doesn't vegetarianism preclude the eating of eggs anyway-- or just fertilized eggs?? Eggs don't have a "face" but. . . . . ~

(ed:sp)

 

[Cheekon]

Thats just sad....

The fact that people don't know enough about their food to interpret what it REALLY means.....

 

[Buster]

Quote:
Most people don't even have a clue where their food comes from anymore. They hear about farms and think, "how quaint", but never pause to think about the fact that the food they buy in the store was grown by a farmer somewhere. I've even heard someone say "I'd never drink milk from a cow, I only drink milk from the store."