Will Buttermilk help with weight gain?

[treecow]

Will giving one of my sick hens buttermilk help her gain back some weight?? Can chickens have buttermilk?

 

[yo burrill]

I would not try buttermilk with a chicken. It takes special flora in the gut to digest milk products. They dont normally eat milk so there is a good chance it would make her sick. Wheat bread would be a better choice or cooked eggs sounds bad but the protein would help her gain back weight and muscle.

 

[welasharon]

Scrambled eggs with some cottage cheese is good. Vitamins would help. Frequent feedings.

 

[treecow]

Should I give her her regular food too or just egg, because she doesnt want to eat her regular food?

 

[welasharon]

You can mix some of the regular feed in the eggs if you would like. Why are you trying to put weight on her?

 

[Chris09]

Buttermilk can be either real buttermilk (the liquid leftover from making butter) or artificial/ cultured buttermilk (fermented with lactic acid bacteria) also this type of buttermilk is what most store sell. Either one would good for adding some weight to poultry.

Also if you fattening poultry you should keep corn to minimum if fed at all.
Corn if high in calories and chickens eat to fill there caloric needs, so if you feed a lot of corn they will eat less and not put on as much weight.

Chris

 

[Judy]

Corn is low in protein so reduces their total protein intake. Birds are lactose intolerant, so best not to give milk products unless the lactose is pre-digested, or already broken down, as in yogurt or kefir.

 

[Chris09]

Corn is low in protein so reduces their total protein intake. Birds are lactose intolerant, so best not to give milk products unless the lactose is pre-digested, or already broken down, as in yogurt or kefir.

It's not that corn is a low protein feed, it that corn is high in caloric energy [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]so the bird take in there caloric need much sooner and eat less. [/FONT]

The buttermilk that you get from most all stores is Fermented or "pre-digested" much the same as kefir and yogurt.
The true buttermilk is much like whey it is just that one is a byproduct from making butter and the other is the byproduct of making cheese.
So if yogurt, kefir and whey is "safe" for chickens then so is buttermilk.

I myself have never had a problem with giving any milk products to my chickens.

Chris

 

[treecow]

I'm trying to put weight on her because she is sick and skinny and no one knows what's wrong her.

 

[welasharon]

Well you need to figure out what is wrong or you are wasting your time and she won't get better. Can you tell us more about her symptoms? How does she act? Have you checked for worms? Mites/Lice?