Things I don't feed my chickens😊

[NatJ]

Anything with too much salt. Chickens get poisoned from salt easily if fed too much of it

I agree, too much salt is bad.

since salt is not regularly found in what they normally eat.

This is just plain wrong. Some salt IS found in what chickens normally eat. Go read the label on any bag of chicken food. Or read articles about the bad things that happen when chickens do not get enough salt.

Here is an example from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension:
https://extension.umaine.edu/livestock/poultry/nutrition-for-chickens/

Just like people, chickens need the RIGHT AMOUNT of salt. Not none. Not too much.

And if you do not feed your chickens a commercially-produced chicken feed, go look up the nutritional information for the things they do eat. Small amounts of salt are present in many things.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Ok, now I understand. Thanks for the info. I guess the safe thing to do is to just go buy commercial egg laying crumbles or pellets and feed them nothing but that. Let the agribiz experts figure it all out and all I have to do is buy bags of feed from them and all is well. But if that's what I'm doing, why even bother with chickens other than because they are fun? I may as well just go buy my eggs and meat at the store. It's certainly cheaper and easier that way. I gotta say, tho, that store bought meat is tasteless and the eggs look puny. What to do... what to do?

They are your birds, you can do whatever you want with them.

The fact is, good nutrition is good nutrition, whether its provided by Agribusiness or a well designed polycultural pasture in season. For the vast majority of people, a quality commercial feed is superior nutrition, at much lower price, than anything they can produce on their own. Most don't have the land, the equipment, the storage, the climate, and the soils to produce everything needed to generate a nutritional and balanced poultry diet, even if they had knowledge of their nutritional requirements.

But like I said, your birds. If you want to feed them bread because "agribusiness bad", your call. Fact is, agribusiness knows better*. So do those of us who have done our own research.

Of course, every generation a subset of the population celebrates ignorance and rejects knowledge in favor of belief. That's unlikely to change any time soon. Which leads me to my asterisk, above.

*in spite of that knowledge, Agribusiness sometimes produces, deliberately, a substandard product to meet the demand of ignorant consumers - which is why you should do your own research and be a selective shopper. Its (mostly) not their job to protect us from ourselves. Thankfully, such products don't stand the test of time, nor do the companies that focus on making them.

 

[yallowchicken81819]

Don't give em yogurt either...

 

[RoyalChick]

Don't give em yogurt either...

Because?

 

[yallowchicken81819]

Because?

Dyes, preservatives, unnatural sugars

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Don't give em yogurt either...

Waiting on an explanation. Please. Educate us.

 

[yallowchicken81819]

Dyes, preservatives, unnatural sugars

Waiting on an explanation. Please. Educate us.

I was meaning don't give them anything but plain, non-store bought yogurt

 

[yallowchicken81819]

I was meaning don't give them anything but plain, non-store bought yogurt

I don't know many people who get yogurt from a farm instead of the store

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Dyes, preservatives, unnatural sugars

Don't buy yogurt with saccharine, sucralose, splenda, etc. That's not reason to avoid yogurt, that's a choice to avoid artificial sugars (which aren't necessary anyways).

Plain yogurt doesn't contain dyes. Nor does decent yogurt of any variety.

Preservatives? Yogurt is itself a preservative. So is salt. and sugar. Lactic Acid.

You are going to have to be a little more specific please.

 

[RoyalChick]

Dyes, preservatives, unnatural sugars

The one I buy contains milk and live cultures and nothing else.