A chook question

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by Veggie Boy, Jun 27, 2004.

  1. Veggie Boy

    Veggie Boy Junior Member

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    Here's one for Chook Nut, or anyone/everyone else. For some reason, until I read something while surfing the net the other day, I thought that chucking meat scraps to the chooks was a no no. Not sure why I thought this, after all the chooks love worms and grubs, both of which are meat. Also meat is high in protein - which is what I need to get into my chooks. I've saw my chooks do some serious damage to a wood pigeon once, but I'm not proposing to repeat that exercise.

    No if I am to give my chooks meat scraps, does it have to be only the cooked, only the raw or both. Are any meats off limits. I assume fish is also OK??

    Any suggestions appreciated. I'm gradually gaining all this knowledge, so hopefully one day I'll be able to pass some back - at the moment it seems that all I do is ask questions. I'll post an e-mail soon outlining where I'm at presently with my small permie system and my successes and failures (unforunatelly I think the failures may outweight the successes at this stage).
     
  2. makehumusnotwar

    makehumusnotwar Junior Member

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    hey veggie. until this morning, i knew absolutely nothing about chooks, nor have i ever kept any. now, after doing a one-day course on the things, i know a little bit more. some of it sunk in, but then my brain got full.
    apparently - chooks are primarily seed/grain eaters, or at least were and should be. they shouldn't even eat earthworms - the only reason they will eat these is if there is not enough protein already existing in their diet. the protein should ideally come from dark green leafy vegies and herbs, especially the asian vegies which they seem to love. most commercial (even organic) pellet or crushed feeds contain animal offal, which is not considered a good thing for them. i was told, for optimum health and resistance to disease, the chooks should not be eating other animals for their protein. check your sources for food, and, even consider allowing more money to be spent on quality food, which they won't need as much of, as then they will be healthier. therefore your soil will be and then your plants will be and then you will be. it seems to make sense to me.
    i'm soon to get some chooks and am trying to learn as much as i can beforehand. hope this helps in some way, or hopefully someone else can share their knowledge and experience.
     
  3. Guest

    I'm sorry but having kept a lot of chooks and assorted poultry, they love earthworms,bugs and any other animal protein they can get.They may well be primarily seed and grain eaters but eating bugs etc is also a natural part of their diet. I don't know where you did your course Makehumusnotwar but go back and throw a handful of slaters or a crushed snail in their pen and see what happens and then ask for your money back.
     
  4. Guest

    I must concur with previous Guest. Chooks are most definitely of an omnivorous disposition. :lol:
    Now, I'm no microbiologist but I guess the reasoning behind not feeding chooks leftover meat might be that, especially if you are eating them or their eggs you might be risking swapping diseases back and forth... There is some pretty hysterical paranoia coming out about the dangers of backyard poultry keeping since the whole sars/bird flu thing...
    So, probably, if you had to do it, it would safer to give them cooked meat rather than raw stuff, but the chooks would eat them either way I reckon! I don't know that I would recommend this. Do you have a place to go fishing? Use the meat scraps for bait for yabbies and use them to catch fish... (this will only account for your household meat scrap production if you don't each much meat and/or you LOVE fishing...)
     
  5. Guest

    Hi all,

    Hope you enjoyed visiting Jade's place.... its an amazing example of what can be achieved. How did you find it?

    As for her not recommending feeding animal products it doesnt surprise me.... she has a very strict diet that has little animal product included. She recognized though that her lovely dog 'Karma' needed to eat animal protein to get to his correct weight. You can even buy vegetarian eggs that have not fed on bugs etc!

    We have quite a serious mouse problem at the moment and it one of lifes little joys to watch your chooks deal with them (who'd have thought they could get a whole one down all at once). That would be the only meat i feed mine. Yes they will eat pretty well much any meat and i see little problem with it personally... i mean your not actually shoving it down its throat are you!! I try for the whole diet balance, which means greens, grain and bugs/meat.

    Think about growing some of your own grain if your able to or worried about the stuff you buy (Jade buys organic grain for hers to supplement what she grows)... i have been fairly successful and the chooks like the activity of eating them off the stalks.

    Cheers... Dave
     
  6. ruralpeasant

    ruralpeasant Junior Member

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    I got the impression that it wasn't that she didn't recommend feeding chooks animal proteins but that she was teaching people that it wasn't a natural part of a chooks diet to eat worms and grubs.Isn't this in fact quite wrong.
    Kurt
     
  7. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    tell you the truth i don't know where this thread is heading but hey how the heck do you stop a chook from eating grubs n bugs or anything that comes with in their site range???? even the honey eating birds eat bugs for protein.

    you just about lost me on this one.

    len
     
  8. Veggie Boy

    Veggie Boy Junior Member

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    hmmm

    All very interesting. I think I will not feed the chooks meat scraps, but I am certainly happy for them to continue eating bugs etc. I'm also tempted to feed them the mice I catch in traps - but I won't.

    The most interesting thing I found about your reply humus relates to the green veggie thing. I grow silverbeat pretty much just for my chooks and also feed them all sorts of weeds and grass. It clearly makes the yokes much richer (taste and sight). I didn't think these vegetables had protein in them - am I wrong. Does anybody know a site that has a break down of different grains and veges in terms of protein content. I'll go looking myself also and let everyone know if I find a good one.
     
  9. makehumusnotwar

    makehumusnotwar Junior Member

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    sorry all, i think there must have been a bit of a misunderstanding (probably my fault for wording it badly.) i wasn't trying to suggest that chooks don't eat bugs/insects/worms, because i know they do, moreso just trying to indicate that they don't have any need for meat from larger animals in their diet which can easily be obtained from plant sources. the example i was shown was a specifically vegetarian system, with brilliantly healthy, happy prize-winning pure-bred chooks. my opinion is, chooks may love meat scraps if fed them, but just like us, meat from larger animals is not necessary for protein needs and can eventually leed to problems. (yes, i am a vegan, but i don't want to get into an arguement about vegetarianism in humans). and, whether you and your chooks eat meat or not, unless it's organic i wouldn't be feeding it to anything or anyone considering the drugs and disease that commercial meat contains now. the toxins will only end up in your chooks, then your soil, and then you.
    for veggie boy - i couldn't find a breakdown of protein levels, but i have a list of greens that are great for chooks. arrowroot, cassava, yacon, tahitian spinach, taro amaranth, ibika spinach, pigeon pea, tagasaste, COMFREY, chia, burdock, celery, nasturtium, nettle, lovage, chickweed, pinto's peanut, buckwheat, kale and semposai. also, sprouts of most kinds are loved by chooks and will supply very high protein for them. but yes, they still love the bugs and insects.
    hi dave - yes jade's place was yet again amazing, and her chooks were stunning. one thing i was very impressed with was the fact that there was abslutely no smell/odour from any of the housing areas, something which has turned me off from so many other examples of chook keeping i have seen.
     
  10. makehumusnotwar

    makehumusnotwar Junior Member

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    i must say, it certainly is refreshing to have some good ol debate on topics again. i will mention again that i've only recently learnt something about chooks from one person, and have never actually kept chooks myself. i'm open to anyone's opinion's and experiences cos i do want to get chook's soon, and want to do a good job of looking after them.
     
  11. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    we had poultry (chooks/ducks/geese) and never did their yards or confinement areas smell, this all comes down to good husbandry not any specific bias.

    len
     
  12. Tamandco

    Tamandco Junior Member

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    meat for chooks

    I have read quite a few books recommending that poultry not be fed meat scraps. Only one of these books provided a reason. It stated that in producing food in the way of meat and eggs, there can be no guarantee how fresh the meat scraps are and feeding to poultry could risk contamination.

    I personally have interpreted this as to go ahead and feed meat scaps but make absolutely certain that they are fresh. I never store meat meant for the chooks in the 'chook bucket' under the sink and always feed out straight away.

    Have you ever seen a group of hens with a strip of bacon rind? It's the funniest thing to watch.

    On the other hand, I read up on mad cow disease and found that this is caused by feeding cattle animal protien. This includes processed animal protien in the form of pellets and commercial mixes which used to be the norm. I have read that it is illegal in Australia to feed a ruminant animal protien. Apparently there is an link between the feeding of animal protien to cattle and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jacobs Disease in Humans which is transferred across species by the feeding of brain or central nervous system tissue. Certainly worth reading up on.

    There was also quite a lot of publicity in the news some years ago about women in their 40's and 50's developing Creutzfeldt-Jacobs Disease resulting from a fertility (I think) treatment they underwent in their 20's and 30's, involving the use of brain tissue from cadavers. I think from memory there was a class action going on and the articles were featured on programs such as A Current Affair. I haven't been able to find any info on the web but can remember the cases quite clearly.

    A couple of issues worth considering.

    I'd love to hear from some accredited experts in the field. Anyone out there involved with CSIRO?

    Tam
     
  13. mossbackfarm

    mossbackfarm Junior Member

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    Re: A chook question

    As someone who has had lots of chooks over the years, I figured I'd chime in, too...plus, my day job is as an ornithologist, so maybe I qualify as an expert. More likely, though, as someone who doesn't know when to quit :wink:

    Chickens, and all gallinaceous birds (partridges, pheasants, ostrich, etc...), are omnivorous by nature. They also are very curious, and are instantly attracted to small moving objects...and we all know that chicken attraction leads to an attempt to eat. Young chicks are trained by their parents to eat insects, and depending on their environment, will 'graduate' to mice, snakes, nestlings of ground nesting birds, etc. Carrion is sometimes eaten as well

    That said, if the meat is good enough for you to eat, it should be good enough for the chickens. I promise they will like it. Without going into the ethics of it, biologically, it's no stretch for them to lay into the remains of a steak or the bony remnants of a rack of lamb. Saves you some feed costs, too, if that's an issue.

    When our laying hens are growing (0-5months), we'll feed them scraps such as these, but once they start laying, we stop, since a good portion of our customers are vegetarian, and wouldn't appreciate such diets in their chickens.

    My 2 cents.......Rich
     
  14. Veggie Boy

    Veggie Boy Junior Member

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    I just read in Jackie French's Chook Book that chooks don't eat bananas. News to me - mine devour them - one of the reasons I'm keen to grow some banana plants.
     
  15. Guest

    Yeah, I suppose Jackies's chooks simply didn't have a taste for them. Hell, chooks will even eat the inside stem of a banana tree if you give it to them. I suppose like people, chooks sometimes just need to acquire a tase for things. At age 8 I was none too fond of brocoli, for instance and now look a me, I'm a brocoli eating fool.
     
  16. Guest

    But back to this issue of poultry eating leftover meat... I found Rich from Mossback farms comments very interesting and I think he is taking a failry common sense approach.
    But, isn't there some risk that if you gnaw on a rack for a while, and transfer various bacteria and viruses through your saliva to the meat and then feed it to the chooks, and then you actually eat the chooks or their eggs, that you might be transferring or creating some weird pathogens?
    As I said before I am no microbiologist, but I think in the interest of good science and the future of Permaculture we need to look at these subjects seriously. There are people out there that would ban all backyard poultry raising in a heartbeat for fear of Bird Flu or whatever, and we need to be well educated and prepared and responsible...
     
  17. Benn

    Benn Junior Member

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    Hi everyone,
    check the queensland dpi website. Apparently illegal to feed meat (or any vegies that have touched meat) to chooks and pigs in qld! I reckon its a load of crap, but it does give a bit of info on their reasoning. Sorry i don't have the address.
    Cheers,
    Benn
     

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