What your chickens can and can't eat!

[Squawkers]

Mine go crazy fot pizza
going almost 4 years of chicken keeping and all my chickens are healthy

Yep, healthy and extremely happy

 

[Eggs_Over_EZ]

Mine get Kalmbach feed according to their age and purpose. Extras included vegetable scraps, watermelon in summer months, if they are on sale I buy dried soldier fly larvae and feed sporadically. Have feed past flocks pasta if any leftover. Again extra food “snacks” are given sparingly. Oh and of course any eggs that are very dirty are collected and cooked and chopped and given to them. Again sparingly.

 

[skeeeter]

@ChikaInu As far as I know, Rowan Berries are native to the pheasants' environment.
As we do know that said berries are not poisonous, You could offer ripe ones to your pheasants and see if they liked them and wanted more the next day.
Cheers

 

[ameraucana 25]

What about blue berries

 

[NatJ]

What about blue berries

Blueberries are fine for chickens.

(Insert the usual warnings about it being just a part of their diet, not the only thing they eat.)

 

[ameraucana 25]

Thank you

 

[ChaosMom]

It was pretty warm here today, and the birds were feeling it. I tossed them some cheap frozen blueberries, and they went nuts.

I’m hoping that the purple will soon fade from my hands.

 

[BDutch]

What about blue berries

Trust your chickens with the natural feed they find as long as there is enough feed to choose from. If the chickens don’t know the food they nibble, taste and wait until they know it’s okay or not. They have a much better sense for knowing what’s good for them than people have.

 

[ChookaPete]

How about salt encrusted sea bass stuffed with salt seasoned seaweed and finished seasoned with a pinch of salt?

I'm noting post #1 has salt warnings. This is a false claim that has been perpetuated on social media. Salt is needed for all animals and no animal will overeat it. The basis of these claims come from chicken industry study to find how much salt can be added to feed. They found the birds stopped eating it if too high of salt content so went further to force feed birds to find what dosage was lethal. The salt didn't kill the birds, science did.

This is true.


Occasionally I feed my chooks leftover chips I had bought as part of a takeaway meal from a pub, or a fish & chip shop.


A couple of months ago the chips I was buying happened to be very salty, and disappointingly soggy (just not cooked enough, no crunch).

I noticed that my chooks started actually knocking back the chips! They were like "Nope, had enough. Too salty and too soggy!"

So I stopped buying chips! I bought some last night from a different venue and those were made quite well, so I ate all of those. The next time I go there I'll save some for the chooks to try.



And that is the basis of all this - chickens will not eat poisonous things, and will voluntarily stop eating things when the levels approach toxicity (unless there is NOTHING else available for them to eat, including grass and bugs etc.).

 

[ChookaPete]

It was pretty warm here today, and the birds were feeling it. I tossed them some cheap frozen blueberries, and they went nuts.

I’m hoping that the purple will soon fade from my hands.

My chooks are the same with my weeping mulberry tree - when the fruit is ripe I pick them off the tree and drop them to the chooks waiting below, who all scrounge like mad to gobble up each mulberry. Some even don't wait and just HOP off the ground to catch a mulberry!

The mulberries stain my hands like blood, and it is hard to wash off.