Anyone give tomatillos to chickens?

[Morrigan]

I know that the leaves are a no-go, but has anyone given their birds the fruit, minus husk? It happened to be a banner year for tomatillos in my yard, and I've made and canned all the salsa verde I can use. I cut up one tomatillo today, just to see if the chickens liked it -- they did. Before I started giving them more, I was interested to see what other experiences people have had.

For some reason, I can't find any information on tomatillos on the standard treat charts. All I've found is that the leaves are bad, because they in the nightshade family. But I do know the the fruit of other nightshade plants (tomatoes, eggplants) are OK. I'm hoping tomatillos are OK.

 

[nminusyplusm]

I hope it's ok because I've grown pounds of tomatillos (and tomatoes... gotta learn how to can by next year) and I share some with my chickens. As you said, I wouldn't give them any leaves.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Hi.

My chickens aren't crazy about tomatillos, but I throw them out and smash them for the girls anyways. Shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Thing is poisonous night shades and plants in the night shade family are not the same exact thing. Had hens mow tomato plants to ground regularly in the past. I think it's one of those things that has some exaggerated or misreported info.

 

[OneAndTwoOfFour]

I know this is really old but I thought I'd give this info to anyone reading this.

Before even thinking about it, we put HUGE tomatillo PLANTS in with the chicken compost pile and in the run with our 45 bantams. ALL of the chickens DEVOURED these plants...and they were HUGE plants. It took three runs of our John Deer 19 cubic foot cart to remove all of the tomatillo plants.

The chickens ate them ALL within the day. Not a single chicken got sick. (We have over 150.) They LOVED it. Aren't chickens supposed to be really good about NOT eating things that aren't good for them, toxic or poisonous? That's what we're all told. Well, they LOVED our tomatillo plants. Like. Chicken. Crack.

 

[Frazzemrat1]

I know this is really old but I thought I'd give this info to anyone reading this.

Before even thinking about it, we put HUGE tomatillo PLANTS in with the chicken compost pile and in the run with our 45 bantams. ALL of the chickens DEVOURED these plants...and they were HUGE plants. It took three runs of our John Deer 19 cubic foot cart to remove all of the tomatillo plants.

The chickens ate them ALL within the day. Not a single chicken got sick. (We have over 150.) They LOVED it. Aren't chickens supposed to be really good about NOT eating things that aren't good for them, toxic or poisonous? That's what we're all told. Well, they LOVED our tomatillo plants. Like. Chicken. Crack.

I don't think that chickens aren't that good about eating things they shouldn't. Maybe they're better about plants, but I've seen threads on here about people's chickens eating Styrofoam. If it looks interesting, it gets a peck. If it tastes good, its down the hatch.

 

[ThracianHorse]

I feed overripe and squishy ones all the time in the summer. My girls seem to like them. I don't feed the foliage, though. That gets tilled back into the garden at the end of the season.