Things I don't feed my chickens😊

[gila_dog]

Sorry to be critical but your list doesn't work. Garlic? Yeah no, it's fine. I don't even see cat food on the list so it must be been edited but I for sure will give a can of tuna and/or cat food when they're molting/winter needing a protein hit. Bread is not toxic. It's not beneficial at all and should not replace or supplement feed but I'm definitley not worried about a pizza crust getting tossed to them. It's just not a great list. Some of it yes, but not all.

Why is bread not beneficial?

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

Why is bread not beneficial?

When fed in large/medium amounts of too often, it will bloat chickens and all other birds. Eating too much bread can cause death by bloating, or obesity. Bread has no real benefits for chickens, it is more of a filler than anything, which is why it bloats. Because it is not beneficial for them, bread should not be fed for chickens. If you want your chickens to be happy and healthy, then feed them things that help their health.

 

[gila_dog]

Hmmm. So bread has no nutritional value? I guess I don't see how it could be good for people, but has no value for chickens. They sure like it. ???

 

[RoyalChick]

Hmmm. So bread has no nutritional value? I guess I don't see how it could be good for people, but has no value for chickens. They sure like it. ???

Bread is mainly carbohydrate which is energy. It may have some protein, minerals and vitamins.
Not bad at all.
I think if you fed chickens only bread they would not get the nutrition they need.
But there is no harm in giving it to them sometimes.
I think you will find lots of people do and have done so throughout history.

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

Hmmm. So bread has no nutritional value? I guess I don't see how it could be good for people, but has no value for chickens. They sure like it. ???

Just because chickens like something does not mean it is good for them. Chickens also eat plastic and other random things, but that does not mean they should be eating it.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Hmmm. So bread has no nutritional value? I guess I don't see how it could be good for people, but has no value for chickens. They sure like it. ???

Rather than calling out the logical fallacy in the above, I'll illustrate.

Bread has limited benefit, and to the extent it displaces other things in the diet, it is a net negative.

Imagine if, you will, that you have a pocket full of quarters. That pocket full of quarters represents a full chicken, its nutritional needs met for the day. There's good value in it.

Now imagine that you start replacing quarters with pennies, your bread. Suddenly that pocket full of money isn't worth as much. Their nutritional needs no longer met.

Worse, just as you can't put pennies in the local vending machine (unlike quarters, in at least a few places still), the few beneficial things in bread (mostly carbs - energy, and a limited number of vitamins they easily obtain from other sources) can't be used to make better or other things critical to their development.

To the extent that the bread adds to the existing diet, their energy intake exceeds their energy spend - resulting in deposited fat. Unlike humans, chickens don't deposit intramuscular fat well. Instead it collects primarily in the organ cavity where it can cause pressure on the heart and lungs where it restricts blood flow and oxygenation as well as causing the liver to become increasingly friable until it ruptures in a condition called fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome. Which is generally first noted by sudden chicken death.

When you look at a bag of chicken feed, they generally don't tell you the carb count. CHickens will try and eat till their energy needs are met. What they do tell you is Crude Protein, and a tiny bit about the amino acid profile of that protein. Also, Fat, Fiber, and a few key vitamins & minerals.

For adult laying hens, whose nutritional needs are the lowest of any typical chicken "category" (i.e. pullets, Meat birds, dual purpose adolescents, etc) the general minimal dietary recommends are 16% crude protein*, 3.5% fat +/- 3,5% fiber +/- , 1% calcium +/-, .5% phosphorus (to slightly more), 0.25% sodium with key amninos Methionine 0.3%+ and Lysine (about) 0.7%.

How does bread compare?

9% crude protein
2.5% fat
5% fiber (fiber is NOT beneficial to chickens in the way its beneficial to humans - too much of a good thing is not a good thing)
0.8% calcium
0.1% phos
too much sodium
negligible Met, Lys

In short, its a net negative on every single metric.

and at least in waterfowl, high bread intake is associated with developmental abnormalities in ducks, geese, and the like, primarily in the form of "angel wing".

I hope that helps your understanding. Sources available at request.

* you can get by with lower total crude protein if you adjust the amino acid profile, primarily by addition of DL-Methionine and L-Lysine. The EU is on the cutting edge of such research and does reasonably well around 14% CP for adult layers with such adjustments. The US, largely, still gets by with an excess of low quality protein to meet minimal Met and Lys targets.

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

Bread is mainly carbohydrate which is energy. It may have some protein, minerals and vitamins.
Not bad at all.
I think if you fed chickens only bread they would not get the nutrition they need.
But there is no harm in giving it to them sometimes.
I think you will find lots of people do and have done so throughout history.

It is better to be safe than sorry. No bread feeding, period.

Rather than calling out the logical fallacy in the above, I'll illustrate.

Bread has limited benefit, and to the extent it displaces other things in the diet, it is a net negative.

Imagine if, you will, that you have a pocket full of quarters. That pocket full of quarters represents a full chicken, its nutritional needs met for the day. There's good value in it.

Now imagine that you start replacing quarters with pennies, your bread. Suddenly that pocket full of money isn't worth as much. Their nutritional needs no longer met.

Worse, just as you can't put pennies in the local vending machine (unlike quarters, in at least a few places still), the few beneficial things in bread (mostly carbs - energy, and a limited number of vitamins they easily obtain from other sources) can't be used to make better or other things critical to their development.

To the extent that the bread adds to the existing diet, their energy intake exceeds their energy spend - resulting in deposited fat. Unlike humans, chickens don't deposit intramuscular fat well. Instead it collects primarily in the organ cavity where it can cause pressure on the heart and lungs where it restricts blood flow and oxygenation as well as causing the liver to become increasingly friable until it ruptures in a condition called fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome. Which is generally first noted by sudden chicken death.

When you look at a bag of chicken feed, they generally don't tell you the carb count. CHickens will try and eat till their energy needs are met. What they do tell you is Crude Protein, and a tiny bit about the amino acid profile of that protein. Also, Fat, Fiber, and a few key vitamins & minerals.

For adult laying hens, whose nutritional needs are the lowest of any typical chicken "category" (i.e. pullets, Meat birds, dual purpose adolescents, etc) the general minimal dietary recommends are 16% crude protein, 3.5% fat +/- 3,5% fiber +/- , 1% calcium +/-, .5% phosphorus (to slightly more), 0.25% sodium with key amninos Methionine 0.3%+ and Lysine (about) 0.7%.

How does bread compare?

9% crude protein
2.5% fat
5% fiber (fiber is NOT beneficial to chickens in the way its beneficial to humans - too much of a good thing is not a good thing)
0.8% calcium
0.1% phos
too much sodium
negligible Met, Lys

In short, its a net negative on every single metric.

and at least in waterfowl, high bread intake is associated with developmental abnormalities in ducks, geese, and the like, primarily in the form of "angel wing".

I hope that helps your understanding. Sources available at request.

2x. This reply explains a lot.

 

[SandyRiverChick]

Why is bread not beneficial?

I guess I should have given my definition of "beneficial:" given a list of choices, what has the most nutritional value.... Bread? No. Not even for humans, again, given a list of more nutritional choices.

So on the flip side, if there is no list, and the world has ceased to produce more nutritional choices, bread and starve are the only things on the list, all of sudden bread is beneficial....

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Continuing...

Carbs can be stored. Fat can be stored. Both generally as fat. A number of minerals and fat soluable vitamins can be stored against future shortage. You know what can't be stored? Protein. A chicken will use its daily protein intake for repair, for growth (if it is not yet full grown), for feather replacement, and a few other functions. The amino acids it can't use during that metabolic cycle it excretes - that's the primary source of the nitrogen in their deposits. If they are short another day, the only place they can get it from is canibalizing their own bodies. There is no "reserve".

That's why meeting their daily amino acid needs is more critcal over the long term than some variation in carb intake, fat intake, total energy intake, calcium intake,a nd the like. It is also why the profile of the crude protein in terms of its AA makeup is also important.

Ask a knowledgeable, healthy, long term vegan about protein complimentation, and take good notes.

 

[RoyalChick]

The issue for me is that in discussions like this we conflate toxicity with sub-optimal nutrition.
As @U_Stormcrow describes with his pocket full of Quarters analogy, bread can displace higher value foods.
On the other hand, bread is not toxic.
So a ‘never give bread’ is really not a sufficiently nuanced warning to give for example to a new chicken keeper.
Soak your bread in milk and suddenly you have something that is protein and calcium rich.

I don’t eat that much bread so my chickens don’t either. At this time of year they eat mainly whatever they find for themselves. But if it were winter with snow on the ground, and my chicken feed got spoiled or eaten by raccoons, I don’t think I would hesitate to feed my flock bread and milk until I could get a replacement bag of feed.