prairiegirl
Lovin' The Homestead
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You're chickens are in for a treat. Ours like rice, but then, they like a lot of things.
Feeding rice to chickens?
- Thread starter Quail_Antwerp
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Farmer Kitty
Lovin' The Homestead
I know mine like it. Not sure about feeding it raw as I've always fed it cooked but, if it's cold out, it could be a nice warm treat for them.
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Quail_Antwerp
Cold is on the Right, Hot is on The Left
IF it's cold out?Farmer Kitty said:
We have a foot of snow out there!!I cooked it and crumbled some hard boiled eggs into it. They loved it!!
dacjohns
Our Frustrated Curmudgeon
I say give it to them. You can cook it if you want. They might like it warm. If you have wheat grinder you can run it through on a real coarse setting and crack the rice.
FarmerChick
Super Self-Sufficient
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I didn't have a clue either...LOL...but I got this from WIKI and it is interesting. I never feed anything but my pellets to my birds, and they get the bugs and grass....but never give rice, eggs, nothing.
just me.
This is a common misconception. No chicken, seagull, dove, pigeon, or any other bird for that matter has ever "exploded" after eating uncooked rice.
The rice WILL expand in the body, but it is usually not enough to cause any problems. However, sometimes the rice will cause an impactation in the crop or the stomach which will eventually kill the bird.
"Explosions" don't happen with uncooked rice.
Answer
May lead to crop rot, but I hardly doubt even that.
ACTUAL Answer
No, uncooked rice will not cause any bird to explode. And, contrary to previous posters, it will not even expand in the stomach. Uncooked rice expands by absorbing hot (usually boiling) water. Though the water doesn't have to be boiling for absorption to take place, absorbtion slows greatly at normal avian body temperatures. So, even if the water was available in the bird's stomach, it would take hours, perhaps days, for the rice to expand significantly. Acid in the stomach would break down the rice and pass it through to the next stage of digestion long before this became an issue. Moreover, birds just don't drink a lot of water, because the weight makes it harder for them to fly. And what little water they do drink passes through their digestive system much faster than the rice. But, even if the water and the rice stayed there in the stomach for long enough for full absorbtion to take place, the total volume of the rice and water does not increase when the rice absorbs the water. If you had 2 teaspoons of water and 1 teaspoon of uncooked rice in a bird's stomach, when the rice absorbs the water, you would have, at most, 3 teaspoons of "cooked" rice, the same total volume as before the water was absorbed. Whether it's water, uncooked rice, cooked rice, or any combination of the three, 3 teaspoons is 3 teaspoons. If a bird's stomach can hold 2 teaspoons of water and 1 teaspoon of uncooked rice without exploding, then it can also hold 3 teaspoons of cooked rice.
If you believe that uncooked rice will explode in a bird's stomach, I invite you to travel to Southwest Louisiana during rice planting season. Hundred of millions of blackbirds overwinter down there, waiting for the rice farmers to plant before they fly north to become pests in corn and soybean fields in the Midwest. Rice is planted by broadcasting from an airplane. When the blackbirds hear a plane flying over, they will actually follow the plane to the field being planted, and as soon as the seed (which is the rice grain itself, essentially identical to "uncooked rice") is dumped in the field, the blackbirds will land and will literally pick the field clean. As you can imagine, this is quite an inconvenience to hundreds of rice farmers in Southwest Louisiana. They would very much like to eradicate blackbirds. If you could kill them by simply letting them eat all the rice they wanted to, until they exploded, then you would see tens of thousands of dead blackbirds lying in every rice field in the area. But the only dead blackbirds you will find in a Louisiana rice field are the ones that the farmers killed with shotguns (or that the USDA killed with poison).
As for chickens, specifically, they generally eat corn. Not because rice is bad for them, but because corn has more nutritive value per cost. But here's the thing. Corn, like rice, is a cereal grain. And dry corn will expand, under the right conditions, just like rice will ("grits" is ground corn, cooked similarly to rice, by boiling in water, only grits will absorb up to 3 times as much water as rice will). So, if rice will expand in a chicken's stomach, then corn will expand more. And if uncooked rice caused chickens to explode, then so would corn. But corn doesn't cause chickens to explode. And neither does uncooked rice.
Birds have been eating "uncooked" grains for as long as mankind has been growing them (and even before that, birds were eating the wild pre-cursors to such grains for millions of years). Except for predatory birds, uncooked grains and similar seeds make up the majority of most birds' diets. In fact, most "bird feed" is composed mostly of a variety of these uncooked grains. All of these grains will expand when soaked in water for a sufficient period of time (though the length of time decreases as the temperature of the water increases). And yet, birds don't die from eating uncooked grains. If they did, they wouldn't be around anymore.
just me.
This is a common misconception. No chicken, seagull, dove, pigeon, or any other bird for that matter has ever "exploded" after eating uncooked rice.
The rice WILL expand in the body, but it is usually not enough to cause any problems. However, sometimes the rice will cause an impactation in the crop or the stomach which will eventually kill the bird.
"Explosions" don't happen with uncooked rice.
Answer
May lead to crop rot, but I hardly doubt even that.
ACTUAL Answer
No, uncooked rice will not cause any bird to explode. And, contrary to previous posters, it will not even expand in the stomach. Uncooked rice expands by absorbing hot (usually boiling) water. Though the water doesn't have to be boiling for absorption to take place, absorbtion slows greatly at normal avian body temperatures. So, even if the water was available in the bird's stomach, it would take hours, perhaps days, for the rice to expand significantly. Acid in the stomach would break down the rice and pass it through to the next stage of digestion long before this became an issue. Moreover, birds just don't drink a lot of water, because the weight makes it harder for them to fly. And what little water they do drink passes through their digestive system much faster than the rice. But, even if the water and the rice stayed there in the stomach for long enough for full absorbtion to take place, the total volume of the rice and water does not increase when the rice absorbs the water. If you had 2 teaspoons of water and 1 teaspoon of uncooked rice in a bird's stomach, when the rice absorbs the water, you would have, at most, 3 teaspoons of "cooked" rice, the same total volume as before the water was absorbed. Whether it's water, uncooked rice, cooked rice, or any combination of the three, 3 teaspoons is 3 teaspoons. If a bird's stomach can hold 2 teaspoons of water and 1 teaspoon of uncooked rice without exploding, then it can also hold 3 teaspoons of cooked rice.
If you believe that uncooked rice will explode in a bird's stomach, I invite you to travel to Southwest Louisiana during rice planting season. Hundred of millions of blackbirds overwinter down there, waiting for the rice farmers to plant before they fly north to become pests in corn and soybean fields in the Midwest. Rice is planted by broadcasting from an airplane. When the blackbirds hear a plane flying over, they will actually follow the plane to the field being planted, and as soon as the seed (which is the rice grain itself, essentially identical to "uncooked rice") is dumped in the field, the blackbirds will land and will literally pick the field clean. As you can imagine, this is quite an inconvenience to hundreds of rice farmers in Southwest Louisiana. They would very much like to eradicate blackbirds. If you could kill them by simply letting them eat all the rice they wanted to, until they exploded, then you would see tens of thousands of dead blackbirds lying in every rice field in the area. But the only dead blackbirds you will find in a Louisiana rice field are the ones that the farmers killed with shotguns (or that the USDA killed with poison).
As for chickens, specifically, they generally eat corn. Not because rice is bad for them, but because corn has more nutritive value per cost. But here's the thing. Corn, like rice, is a cereal grain. And dry corn will expand, under the right conditions, just like rice will ("grits" is ground corn, cooked similarly to rice, by boiling in water, only grits will absorb up to 3 times as much water as rice will). So, if rice will expand in a chicken's stomach, then corn will expand more. And if uncooked rice caused chickens to explode, then so would corn. But corn doesn't cause chickens to explode. And neither does uncooked rice.
Birds have been eating "uncooked" grains for as long as mankind has been growing them (and even before that, birds were eating the wild pre-cursors to such grains for millions of years). Except for predatory birds, uncooked grains and similar seeds make up the majority of most birds' diets. In fact, most "bird feed" is composed mostly of a variety of these uncooked grains. All of these grains will expand when soaked in water for a sufficient period of time (though the length of time decreases as the temperature of the water increases). And yet, birds don't die from eating uncooked grains. If they did, they wouldn't be around anymore.
MorelCabin
Quilting Extraordinaire
The bag of feed I bought for my pigeons has brown rice in it, along with all kinds of other grains seeds and beans and peas...my chickens just devour it...so I'm changing them over to this with a couple of other seeds added and stopping the layer feed all together. I'l let you all know how it goes..but my gut tells me it will be much better for them:>)
