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Post by oliverman on May 11, 2015 8:18:56 GMT -5
It has always seemed ridiculous to feed hens this way. Glad to see I am not the only one. tinyurl.com/mna7hkb
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Post by gakaren on May 11, 2015 9:13:05 GMT -5
I've always found it ridiculous too! It's not natural!
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Post by brownrexx on May 11, 2015 9:46:08 GMT -5
You can't change basic biology - chickens are NOT meant to be vegetarians although I think that one reason people want this is because they don't want their chickens to have been fed slaughterhouse waste products which may contain pathogens.
I give left over meat scraps to my chickens because they love them and I figure that if it's safe for me to eat then it's OK for them too. I only give them cooked meat scraps of course.
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Post by ecsoehng on May 21, 2015 20:09:07 GMT -5
Well if the hens are pastured, they are not going to be vegetarian. How can you even call them that?
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Post by davidjp on May 21, 2015 21:48:30 GMT -5
I think its probably an attempt to ease concerns about what's in the commercial chicken feed. I suspect that rendered meat, from cattle and probably chickens as well and feather meal are some of the ways that protein levels are boosted in standard feeds.
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Post by lilolpeapicker on May 23, 2015 19:03:14 GMT -5
They are actually omnivores. I went looking for chicken yesterday and all chicken says that they were fed the vegetarian diet...couldn't find anything different.
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Post by brownrexx on May 25, 2015 9:13:13 GMT -5
It's because they are "factory farmed" and never see the outdoors to forage. They are fed meal that is all grain (vegetarian) so that the chickens do not get slaughterhouse by products.
People think that vegetarian and organic sounds wonderful but it actually makes the chickens suffer as they are being raised. Chickens don't care about organic grain - they want bugs!
If you look at free range chicken, I don't think that it will be advertised as vegetarian.
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Post by berrygal on Jul 6, 2015 11:32:48 GMT -5
I once knew a lady who was a vegetarian and who refused to eat eggs from chickens unless they were fed a vegetarian diet...I'm not sure if she defined bugs/insects as part of a vegetarian diet or not, but she did not want eggs from chickens that were fed leftovers from the table, since that usually including meat scraps of some sort. Since our chickens had access to the compost heap, where we dumped all of our leftovers, she refused to eat any of the eggs from dad's chickens.
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Post by brownrexx on Jul 6, 2015 15:50:37 GMT -5
My hens are definitely NOT vegetarian. I knocked some Japanese beetles into a bucket of water earlier today and I just poured it into the hens outside pen. It was a feeding frenzy and there was not one beetle left!
I recently heard that you can freeze the beetles for winter snacks for the chickens. I don't know if I want bags of bugs in the freezer though.
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Post by desertwoman on Jul 6, 2015 15:57:06 GMT -5
I don't know if I want bags of bugs in the freezer though. You could use black plastic bags and then you'd only "know " what was in there but not be able to see them.
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Post by waynesgarden on Jul 6, 2015 20:03:24 GMT -5
They love mice.
Wayne
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Post by binnylou on Jul 7, 2015 8:48:53 GMT -5
Yes they do...when hubby cleaned the old chicken house, it was like a football game...with the lead chicken having the mouse....running from one end of the chicken house to the other.
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Post by octave on Jul 25, 2015 9:55:47 GMT -5
Chickens are scavengers by nature. They'll eat just about anything in sight. When we had outdoor cats we had to make sure their feeding bowl was out of the way, because chickens would literally dive and gorge themselves on cat food.
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