Why cant you feed a chicken the sunflower stocks?

[Sweet Pea Farms]

Hi everyone,
I had some very nice golden lace polish chickens. One day I got lazy and threw them a whole sunflower stock(plant) into the coop. No lie, 30 min later they had foam coming out of there beaks and well they were dead. So my question is why? Why cant you feed them the plant when you can feed them the seeds off of it?

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I don't know the answer to your question except for what I just found doing a web search...so you might consider this as a possibility as some things are not toxic to poultry that are to humans.

Anyhow, here it is:



"Sunflower petals are poisonous" from the following website
http://healthrecipes.com/sunflower_seeds.htm

 

[galanie]

I am SO GLAD to have seen this! I am planning on growing some sunflowers this year and now I know not to let them have the plants.

 

[missydcpc]

Me too, and I was planning on hanging the flower, stalk and all in the coop in winter.

 

[donrae]

Well, I've thrown stalks in the run that were dead and dried and my birds were fine. Maybe the drying helped, vs a fresh stalk? I honestly don't remember if the birds ate any of the stalk or leaves, just that the stripped the head pretty fast!

 

[FuzzyButtsFarm]

I am so sorry for you loss but you have helped alot of people today. I for one had no idea that this could happen. I threw a sunflower head into the run a couple of days ago and they wouldn't touch it till I broke it up. Good thing I didn't throw in the stalk.