Defra rules?

[AnnieG]

I'm getting a bit confused about the new (?) defra rules. Can we feed our girls mealworms and scraps? I'm told not but I know a lot of people who are still doing it. When I say they're not suppose to they say 'what people don't see...'
Are there any other things they can't have? Or would it be easier to tell me what they can have? lol
Should this post be remove as people who are not members can see it?

[jackian]

Mine have meal worms although they are supposed to be banning meal worms due to samonella or something .They also have scraps and always have .
I can just see the powers that be at the door any moment now..
I don't give mine too much left over rice or pasta but they do have loads of left over veg from dinner etc ., sweet corn, peas ,tuna ,scraps of fish. Also loads of veg from the allotments , but not usually till the afternoon when they have turned their beaks up at the pellets.
My girls lay lovely eggs and hopefully I won't have to change a thing .
Like human diet do's and don'ts If you read all the rules you would scare your self to death and die of starvation ..

Jackie x

[Chicken drumstick]

How will anyone know if you feed scraps ....they wont !

I,m sure most keepers do .

Not me though i,m a good boy

Thats my story and i,m sticking to it

[Chookaholic]

he he: hmm not sure about that Drummy!

mine girls get allsorts out of the kitchen ... and no one is going to tell me my chooks cant have baby spinach : theyd sulk and protest with an egg off!

I think as long as youre sensible . no cheap and nasty meat products or raw meat etc theres nothing to worry about. I have often given my cat a chicken wing (his favourite treat) and a chook has run of with it hotly pursued by 14 others... what can i do? have you ever tried to catch a chook with a roasted chicken wing? Rocky Balboa would never had stood a chance!!!

seriously though Manda is a real Oracle when it comes to DEFRA etc :)

[Mo]

The rule was brought in as a reaction (overreaction?) to the BSE outbreak in the 1980s. After first creating the conditions for it by
1. cutting funding for vet research
2. reducing the temperatures that animal feed producers had to cook animal byproducts at
then years of saying that there was no problem
they suddenly realised that they had to do something as Europe banned import of our beef.
So it was a ban.

I'm not sure that anything else would have worked commercially, where there are rules rogue firms will break them. Who's daft idea was it to feed vegetarian cows on dead, diseased sheep anyway.

But hens are omnivores. They eat anything they can find. In wartime people were encouraged to boil up all their scraps to feed the hens. I can remember the distinctive smell of Bran Mash with potato peelings cooking in my Grandma's kitchen. And I'm sure that if I gave my hens scraps from my kitchen they would thrive on them - since I would not give them anything that wasn't fit for human consumption then eating it 'second hand' by eating the eggs wouldn't harm me.

If you are planning to accidentally drop leftovers near the hens there are some things to be careful about. Salt is not good. I'm sure other members will tell you more.

[Skeksis]

Its also extremely bad to ever let hens have any chicken products including cooked chicken. This is because there are lots of diseases which are not killed off by cooking so its very unhealthy.

[HazellB]

I'm pretty sure the DEFRA rules are for commercial keepers only. If you don't sell eggs to third parties (meaning via a shop, not directly from yourself to the customer) it doesn't affect you at all. The point being that you, selling eggs or meat to a known person directly, can then inform they that your meat/eggs are not tested.

Mealworms should be salmonella tested, by the way. All imported animal feed is. If any fails in the shipment the lot gets sent back, which often causes me no end of woes as I sell hundreds of hide dog chews each week and can be six weeks waiting for new stock when there's a positive test at Portsmouth.

There's more chance of them picking up salmonella from wild birds anyway. So even if a commercial farm is suspected of feeding illegal kitchen waste, there isn't any proof that's how they introduced problems

[jackian]

I have already written on this subject but have been thinking about it.

My girls have pellets all day and extra treats ( or as my OH likes to think of them supplements ) late afternoon which they look forward to and enjoy with a ravish and a relish
Would defra rather have our lovely girls , looking good , well looked after, roaming around with space ....or... Chickens in cages , hardly able to move , pale, floppy combs no feathers etc ., etc. .
I think we have the answer . Let them concentrate more on the ones that need help and leave us to spoil our girls and give them the life they deserve .

Jackie x

[lancashire lass]

I'm pretty sure the DEFRA rules are for commercial keepers only

The title of the DEFRA ban is

Ban on feeding of kitchen scraps to pet poultry and other pet farmed animals

so there's no confusion as to who it is aimed at I'm afraid. But Mo is correct in the knee jerk reaction as a result of the BSE outbreak and how commercially it affected the exports of UK meat. The last 2 paragraphs of the ban say it all really:

What will happen if your poultry get a notifiable disease?
In many cases where poultry get a notifiable disease quite a few of them die very quickly. If disease is confirmed then any that are still alive will be slaughtered by AHVLA staff.

What will be the effect on the rest of the country?
Movement restrictions will be imposed on the surrounding part of the country preventing the movement of poultry. The biggest effect will be on the export trade as all exports will be stopped and some may not resume for several months.

[AnnieG]

Thanks everyone. So it's aimed at us backyard keepers? Sad really because we can't ask the girls what they want and to be honest I think we all know what they'd say.

[Richard]

If any of them had seen me feeding my chickens every afternoon for the last 15 years I'd be doing time by now
I give them just Chicken Feed in the morning and scraps + a bit more chicken feed mid to late afternoon.

I can see where they were at ref the time the article was written (2012).

Guess it's there are rules and there are rules.

Us teenagers of the 60's are a rebellious lot !!

Richard

[AnnieG]

Richard, you could rename the forum... Richards rebels!

[tortzblue]

Thank you for allowing such an open forum. I used to subscribe to one where, as a new chicken mum, I asked this kind of question and my thread was locked as it was too controversial! (I love your honesty Richard.)
Personally if you are sensible and really "ZAP" the food and it is free from salt, sugar and other additives i.e. only natural unprocessed food scraps I can't see this would be a problem. The DEFRA rules are trying to prevent unscrupulous ignorant people abusing birds by feeding harmful waste junk food. We on the other hand try our best to ensure our girls have a nutritious, healthy diet.

[stace]

Well i'm afraid i also break the rules then. They have leftover veg, pasta, rice, mealworms, and of course their pellets. The only people who eat the eggs are us. To be honest i will carry on doing what i have done for the past 5 years, shoot me!!

[Richard]

hehe

They seem to live long and prosper!

Richard

PS. Thank you Tortz (and good name Wenders)