Seven things that should not be included in chicken feed

While the title is a bit on the dramatic side, what we mean is that you are better off by avoiding the things that we have mentioned to ensure the health of your chickens. Usually many people tend to feed their chooks bits and pieces from the table and knowing what not to give the poultry can help.

While people are quite quick to throw off things like peels of bananas, stems of broccoli and tops of celery, these could come in handy for feeding the farm animals. A good practice would be to keep a container next to the counter in your kitchen and collect scraps that include things like rice that is leftover, ends of tomatoes, popcorn scraps and other things.

Mostly chickens will eat most of the stuff that you feed them but you will notice that they do leave things like peels of avocado and citrus rinds uneaten. Apparently research shows the chickens will avoid peels of citrus fruits as it could result in producing eggshells that are soft.

Here is a list of things that you are better off not feeding to the poultry. This is based on some homegrown wisdom, some research and some feedback from people who are into this line of work

Pit and peel of avocados

Though many people do say that they have had no problems when they have given avocado to their poultry there seems to be some problems with this.  Apparently the problem with feeding avocado pits and peels to chicken arises from the fact that avocados have persin which is a compound that can be toxic to poultry. So do keep those avocado peels and pits from the bucket of scraps that you are using for your chicken.

Chocolate

In most cases this is something that is not very likely to land in the bucket where things that are collected to feed your chickens are but still worth mentioning. We all know that chocolate is toxic to canines due to the compound Thebromine. It is also known to be bad for poultry. Anyway it makes sense not to give chocolate to your birds.