I have seen some questions about feeding rice to chickens and I would like to know how much rice you have to give them untill they get sick, because the food I buy is from the rice a poultry feed shop and sometimes rice falls into the feed there are about 20 grains per cup full is this okay or do i have to spens all day picking them out?

-- Steve Hill (ukph@edsamail.com.ph), April 16, 2001

Answers

Sometimes we have rice left over in our long term storage and that goes into the poultry food at my place. I mix it a lot heavier than 20 grains per cup when its on hand and it never hurt any of the birds.

-- William in Wi (gnarledmaw@lycos.com), April 16, 2001.

Steve, I just went through this, as we moved to Louisiana, and locally grown broken rice is a very inexpensive feed for poultry. At first, I thought it would make them sick, but it turns out that in Asia, they feed poultry a diet high in broken rice and rice bran with no adverse effects, and the same is true here in Louisiana. As long as you're not trying to feed them on straight polished rice, they'll be fine.The farmer I got my chicks from is feeding as much as half broken rice, and his birds (all 200 of them) are healthy, and he's been doing this for 20 years.

-- Kristin, in LA. (positivekharma@aol.com), April 16, 2001.