opinions on feeding chickens chicken meat and bones?

[pegm]

I have given mine both chicken and turkey bones and they are picked clean. I throw them in and the races begin. Fun to watch!!

 

[Mtn Laurel]

I used to give my girls chicken and they loved it. I didn't have a problem with it.

BUT - I have since stopped doing so on the advice of my vet. His concern was disease - salmonella and others - that may be passed onto my birds from eating their own kind.

I wasn't giving them so much chicken that it made an impact on the amount of food they were getting so I stopped it on his advice.

 

[donrae]

I used to give my girls chicken and they loved it. I didn't have a problem with it.

BUT - I have since stopped doing so on the advice of my vet. His concern was disease - salmonella and others - that may be passed onto my birds from eating their own kind.

I wasn't giving them so much chicken that it made an impact on the amount of food they were getting so I stopped it on his advice.

Are you talking cooked or raw? I can see how there might be concerns about raw, but I'm pretty sure cooking kills any disease they might get, that's the whole point of us cooking our food. Definitely kills salmonella.

 

[Mtn Laurel]

Are you talking cooked or raw? I can see how there might be concerns about raw, but I'm pretty sure cooking kills any disease they might get, that's the whole point of us cooking our food. Definitely kills salmonella.

Both. He said to not feed them chicken in any form. I'd think if it was cooked well enough it would kill most diseases but I'll be the first to admit that sometimes my chicken is a little pink at the bone, maybe not cooked as well as it should be.

As chicken was never a major portion of their diet and more like a "treat", it isn't a problem. I just give it to the dogs instead!

 

[LTygress]

From what I understand, salmonella is one of those germs that just about comes with chickens, but they can easily survive it. From what I recall in studying years ago, salmonella itself is not dangerous. It gets dangerous when it comes in numbers great enough to compromise an immune system. That is part of why we HAVE to cook chicken meat to a certain temp to consider it safe to eat. I need to do more research though.

I do know thay chickens are immune to a lot of things that affect us humans in our every day environment. This is why chickens can have open wounds, and not worry so much about infection and death. Yes it is still possible. But much less likely. I've had a chick with his head pecked open by another chicken, and survived just fine with almost no special care. How many humans could do that? All I did was separate him from the older chickens until it healed.

Chicken meat has forever been considered 'dirty'. This is quite the opposite of beef, which is much like human flesh. When we get cuts or scraps, we need to wash the wounds and cover it only with STERILE dressing. Cow (and human) muscle tissue is considered very sterile itself. This is also why we can typically eat beef under-cooked without worry. The tissue is sterile when it is butchered, because it was sterile when the animal was alive.

This is also why commercial hatcheries, chicken farms, and egg farms have to go through so much trouble to stop the SPREAD of salmonella. It pretty much already exists, but not in great enough numbers to pose a threat to our health. And the few germs that make it out of those, are killed in cooking.

That being said, feeding chicken meat to chickens wouldn't pose a problem, unless you left the meat in an environment to grow an entire salmonella bacteria culture.

 

[pdirt]

Over the years, I've read several articles comparing salmonella levels in conventional vs organic vs pastured raised chickens. I'll see if I can resurrect some of those articles, but the main point is that salmonella tested much higher in the conventionally raised chickens. Some of the studies showed some organically/pastured birds had very low or non-detectable levels of salmonella.

The conventional ones are the ones that were raised in confinement (they don't go outside) in very large numbers. Some of these chicken houses hold more than 200,000 birds! How could there NOT be formation and spread of disease in such dense populations, poor living conditions and nutrition?

I'd be curious if anyone here on BYC has bothered to test their own chickens for salmonella and how much such a test costs.

LTygress is correct in that simply consuming meat contaminated with salmonella won't make you sick unless there are high levels of salmonella in the meat and it is not thoroughly cooked. if the meat is undercooked anyways and your immune system, aka your gut flora, is not as robust as it could be, you *might* get sick. Your gut flora could be weak due to a whole slew of reasons, a very potent one being the use of antibiotics. I'm not a doctor, but I do educate myself on things health oriented. Our immune systems are more than just our gut bacteria, but a very large portion of our lymphatic system is contained in our guts (lymph is the system of our immune response).

I've been sick from undercooked chicken, but it was years ago when my health wasn't as robust as it is now and the chicken was conventially raised.

 

[aart]

Just cooked up a pot of chicken stock, made with veggies and a chicken carcass mostly stripped of meat and cut up.
Simmered for 5-6 hours, strained off the broth and wondered if they cooks could eat the solids.

My biggest concern would be the bones, some are rather small and sharp and I'm sure not going to dig thru and get them out of there.

Any danger of a sharp bone fragment causing harm if they tried to eat it?

 

[Kazfam]

Ours enjoyed a nice thanksgiving dinner...turkey and all. They were ecstatic.

 

[donrae]

Just cooked up a pot of chicken stock, made with veggies and a chicken carcass mostly stripped of meat and cut up.
Simmered for 5-6 hours, strained off the broth and wondered if they cooks could eat the solids.

My biggest concern would be the bones, some are rather small and sharp and I'm sure not going to dig thru and get them out of there.

Any danger of a sharp bone fragment causing harm if they tried to eat it?

Mine have never had a problem with them. I frequently do what you're describing.

 

[aart]

Mine have never had a problem with them. I frequently do what you're describing.

Awesome, thanks!