What treat did your chickies get today?

[anniepoo03]

This is a ???? for Mavabird in Texas......What breed of chicken is yours? She looks just like my girls...I have a gray and white one and the other 2 are of the same coloring as yours in the pix. These girls are 18 wks old now and do not have any combs or waddle to speak of. Will they grow them or is this it?. Is yours laying yet?Mine are not. Here are some pix. Thanx for any info that you can share.... I appreciate it very much.

 

[Spartan22]

This is a ???? for Mavabird in Texas......What breed of chicken is yours? She looks just like my girls...I have a gray and white one and the other 2 are of the same coloring as yours in the pix. These girls are 18 wks old now and do not have any combs or waddle to speak of. Will they grow them or is this it?. Is yours laying yet?Mine are not. Here are some pix. Thanx for any info that you can share.... I appreciate it very much. :cd

Was that apples with core/seeds? When I give my chickens apples I remove the core/seeds, I read that seeds could be harmful to them since they contain cyanide.

 

[MeepBeep]

Was that apples with core/seeds? When I give my chickens apples I remove the core/seeds, I read that seeds could be harmful to them since they contain cyanide.

A chicken would need to eat unrealistic amounts of apple seeds in a short time before the cyanide caused any realistic harm, they actually have a high resistance to cyanide...

To put it in perspective the LD50 of cyanide in domestic fowl is 21 mg/kg... In layman's terms that means if you gave 100 chickens 21 mg of cyanide per 1 kg of body weight 50% would pass away...

An apple seed contains about 0.5mg of cyanide, thus you need about 42 seeds to get to the lethal dose range for a 1kg bird, since most standards are about 1.5kg or more, that would mean a single chicken would need to eat about 63 seed or 6 - 7 apples worth of seeds all in a very short period of time to approach the lethal does...

A chickens digestive track is only so big, you can bet when you offer apples they are filling that up with apple, not the seeds

Not saying it's a bad idea to remove apple seeds, but in the end it's not likely to cause any harm if you don't unless that is all you feed them 24/7...

 

[Scwood24]

A suet cage filled with kale and millet ^^ yesterday they had kale, collard, mustard, endive, and turnip greens ^^

 

[loribischof]

My girls LOVE broccoli and cauliflower leaves. As I harvest the veggies, I toss in the big leaves. They come running from every which way!

 

[loribischof]

A chicken would need to eat unrealistic amounts of apple seeds in a short time before the cyanide caused any realistic harm, they actually have a high resistance to cyanide...

To put it in perspective the LD50 of cyanide in domestic fowl is 21 mg/kg... In layman's terms that means if you gave 100 chickens 21 mg of cyanide per 1 kg of body weight 50% would pass away...

An apple seed contains about 0.5mg of cyanide, thus you need about 42 seeds to get to the lethal dose range for a 1kg bird, since most standards are about 1.5kg or more, that would mean a single chicken would need to eat about 63 seed or 6 - 7 apples worth of seeds all in a very short period of time to approach the lethal does...

A chickens digestive track is only so big, you can bet when you offer apples they are filling that up with apple, not the seeds

Not saying it's a bad idea to remove apple seeds, but in the end it's not likely to cause any harm if you don't unless that is all you feed them 24/7...

Thank you so much for breaking it down like this. I too read that Apple seeds were poisonous. I have tons of apple trees and my girls love to peck at the fallen fruit. I was panic stricken how I would let them free range, but protect them from the apples! Lol!!!

 

[trailrider330]

My girls do not care for kale or broccoli or cauliflower leaves like some of you mentioned. Funny how some chickens love certain things and others do not care for them at all.

My girls got their daily treat of mealworms, as well as all the grubs my 9-year-old digs up in the garden for them. They also got some yogurt and grapes.

 

[Spartan22]

Not saying it's a bad idea to remove apple seeds, but in the end it's not likely to cause any harm if you don't unless that is all you feed them 24/7...

Small amount? why risk it when it takes me few seconds to remove Apple seeds, I got small kids that got hold of cleaning chemicals and accidentally drink them. It will take a good amount before it can be lethal to them but why will I risk their health if I can prevent it? That's all I was meaning to say not raising an argument. Anyone can do whatever they want to do to their own flock.

 

[MeepBeep]

Small amount? why risk it when it takes me few seconds to remove Apple seeds

Because when you look at the grand picture, most everything has toxins in it and/or can kill you or your chickens, but that doesn't mean we avoid them just because an excess can kill... The answer as to why risk it, because when I evaluate the actual risk I conclude for myself that it's very minimal, in fact IMO it's unrealistic that a chicken could or would eat a lethal dosage of apples seeds in almost all cases, short of giving them a bowl full of apple seeds and nothing else... I firmly believe that being informed about the actual quantitative dangers vs pretending it's a black and white issue allows people to make better educated decisions...

As can be evidenced in this post as well as many more, people focus too much on potential bad foods because it's on this or that list, and believe it's a black and white issue, that is simply not the fact in regards to most foods... There is a LD50 for pretty much everything at the end of the day... A better and more educated approach IMO is to simply be educated on the real quantitative risk of those food and don't pretend it boils down to simply black and white or good and bad... Thus the reason I posted what I did, providing an educated real world quantitative example to build upon... This avoids people and post like we saw here where people make black and white claims that this or that is bad, when it's not that simple or clear cut...

For example, people say water is safe to drink, well truth is even that claim is not black and white... Fact is a mere six liters (about 1.6 gallons) of water is the LD50 lethal does for an average human adult, does that mean we should avoid drinking water because it can be lethal? No, that is silly, just as silly as saying water is 'perfectly safe' and won't harm you so go ahead and drink 2 gallons at a time... I'm all about knowledge that allows one to establish and set informed moderation or exposure levels... This is why there is a LD50 standard, it's there to build informed decisions...

And last but not least I find comparing your children drinking cleaning chemicals to a chicken eating the occasional apple seed to be exaggerated hyperbole... If you can't see how entirely different that comparison is, I'm sorry...

This is a good read IMO http://ei.cornell.edu/teacher/pdf/ATR/ATR_Chapter1_X.pdf

 

[Mavabird]

This is a ???? for Mavabird in Texas......What breed of chicken is yours? She looks just like my girls...I have a gray and white one and the other 2 are of the same coloring as yours in the pix. These girls are 18 wks old now and do not have any combs or waddle to speak of. Will they grow them or is this it?. Is yours laying yet?Mine are not. Here are some pix. Thanx for any info that you can share.... I appreciate it very much.

The chicken in my picture is an Easter Egger, 11 weeks old at the time of that photo. Mine are 12 weeks now and not laying yet, and not much in the way of a comb, either.