This year neighbors felt it their place to bring me truck loads of pears and apples for my animals and myself, (Which I might add I am a very lucky person since I benifit from fresh stuff without having to garden)
I have canned some of both, enough for me and my son to eat fruit way past next spring. I can give my horses the apples, but I dont want my chickens to be left out.. Can I give them pear cores or even bits of apples?? Will the seeds hurt them? The garden stuff will be coming in the next few days, and I will be throwing some fresh veggies my chickens way as well....
Thanks in advance
MJ
Over run by pears and apples
we toss all fruit cores into the chicken yard. They love them!
MollyD
Chickens love pears. All of ours that are wormy, we toss in to them and they eat all of them. No ill effects seen here.
Sheila
I just tossed mine a bushel of windfall apples today. They love them and it won't hurt them a bit.
The horses have loved them, and I just tossed a rotting pumkin into the coop, they were not as impressed as they were with the pears....
Go figure.
Mine will eat the guts out of a pumpkin, but I have to open it for them.
Yep checked today and they had ate as much as they could get thier heads in so I finished breaking it apart and will check tomorrow....
Miss jester: Chickens are crazy about apples, When we have an abundance of apples, I juice them, chickens can only eat so much fibre, but have put in a full gallon of apple juice at a time and they go crazy for it. The only fruit you don't want to give them, or juice for them is pineapple. they will simply lay down and die from the acid in the fruit. I found that out the hard way. I juiced some left over pineapple and gave it to one of my favorite chickens, (not that much either) two hours later she was stone dead. A tough lesson needless to say. Haystack
I canned the last of the pears yesterday and threw in the cores and skins... They were not so crazy about the skins, but the cores are all gone... LOL my friends are teasing me that the chickens are getting the recommended daily serving of fruits. Some of the fruit I put up will go to them in the winter for a treat. One pumpkin down, a few more to go. There is a pumpkin patch that wont sell rotting fruit so they are giving it to a friend who is making the seeds into munchies, and has more pumpkins than she needs so I am getting the left overs for the chickens. She is also about to turn her garden, so they are going to get some veggies as well....
Our chickens are free ranged and I think they feel obliged to taste every apple that hits the ground. The birds are doing their tasting in the trees. I have seen half eaten apples way up in the tree which has a good population of wild birds.