Can you feed your Chickens Meat?

[GhostRider65]

I know chickens are omnivores, and eat bugs, worms ect. can you feed them scraps from meat, I book I read said yes 1 said NO, never feed them meat...........so whats up with that, chickens in a wild environment are opportunistic, and will eat almost anything, including dead animals mice, moles, frogs, anything that gets close enough to grab..... so why aren't they suppose to have meat? or was the book mistaken? My feeling is they can eat meat any kind though I think cooked would be better. but I have seen them clean a carcass from a butchered deer down to just bone. What do you all think? Kim

 

[chicmom]

You can feed them meat, but avoid the salty meats like ham and bacon because chickens can get saline poisoning and die from that......Chickens will even eat chicken......

 

[10 point]

I,ve read you can feed them meat even chicken like what was said in the post above.

 

[MareeZoCool]

Typical, one book says yes, another says NO.

I feed my chickens the same foods I feed my family.

One thing to remember:

what goes in that hen, comes in the eggs. Watch garlic, and strong-tasting foods!

 

[Rockpile99]

Can you? Yes, no one can stop you. Should you? That's open for a whole series of debates, health, ethics...

I personally feed them all types of meats and other food. Natural type foods that is. No twinkies or anything like that although they probably would have eaten it! They get all my food scraps, raw or cooked, so much so that I don't have anything to compost.

 

[Pinky]

The chickens will probably love to meat every once in a while.
I have a hen that likes to stand in the shallow end of my pond and eat baby fish

 

[BANTAMWYANDOTTE]

Of course they are omnivores, haven't you ever witnessed a worm's demise due to the chickens? Wild Jungle Fowl (the ancestor that all chickens descended from) is an omnivore in the wild and have even been sighted eating dead flock-members. This is just the nature of the chicken.

Feeding meat, although it may upset some people, will not hurt them at all as long as you avoid alot of salt and grease. It is perfectly fine and will not hurt them.




Timothy in KY

 

[gryeyes]

What everybody already said. I even toss dead mice out for them, that have been caught in mouse traps. They fight over the carcasses.

Now and then I give them tuna from the can. I put a ham bone out and they picked it totally clean.

 

[mrsengeseth]

You certainly can, although I find it more than a little disturbing when they fight over a morsel of chicken scrap from dinner.

I stay away from giving them greasy foods, although last year we were making babyback ribs on the grill and one piece fell to the ground and they rushed for it and ate it's greasyness with no ill effects, a steady diet of that though would be just as bad to them as it is to us if not worse. So I try not to let them get to stuff like that. Salty foods too. I don't know, the thought of feeding them bacon bring the images of a chicken stalking a pig from behind a clump of grass waiting for the pig to be just vulnerable enough to launch an attack...might be just me though.

 

[Two Creeks Farm]

Mine love porkchops