It’s not uncommon for chicken owners to find different ways that they can spice up their chicken’s daily diet. One fruit that many people consider feeding to their chickens are grapes. These juicy fruits are packed with many vitamins and minerals including vitamin C, vitamin K, thiamine, riboflavin, potassium, and manganese. With all of the health benefits that they bring, you may be wondering whether or not grapes are healthy for chickens.
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Can Chickens Eat Grapes?
Yes, chickens can eat grapes as an occasional snack and tend to really enjoy their taste and texture. However, there are a few caveats involved with grapes that should be considered in order to maintain your chicken’s good health.
There are many chicken owners that commonly feed a grape or two to their chickens with nothing but great things to say about this snack. While many people are apprehensive about these fruits at first (due to grapes’ bad rap with dogs), they quickly learn that this is an acceptable snack when fed appropriately.
What Do Chickens Naturally Eat In The Wild?
In order to better understand why grapes are fine for chickens to eat, it helps to know what the natural diet of a chicken is. Chickens have been domesticated for around 10,000, but they’ve existed for much longer than that. In fact, they’re a direct descendant from dinosaurs! Over this long period of time, their bodies have become optimized for processing the foods that they most commonly eat.
Due to this, it’s very important that you match your chicken’s diet to the diet of a wild chicken — it’s what their bodies are designed to eat! Fortunately, this isn’t hard to do.
Chickens are omnivorous creatures and eat a massive variety of different foods. These are not picky creatures by any means, so they will attempt to eat any food that looks relatively appetizing to them. Due to this diverse eating habit, chickens are capable of digesting and benefiting from a variety of different foods.
The exact diet of a chicken varies depending on its geographical location, but general trends do exist. A wild chicken’s diet often includes a mixture of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grass, leaves, worms, small insects, and even mice. Grapes seem to naturally fit into this broad diet.
Health Benefits & Dangers Of Grapes
The negative stigma about grapes as a snack for animals comes from the fact that they are toxic to dogs. While its effects on dogs are well-documented, the harm that grapes cause to other animals is all speculation. Grapes can be unhealthy for chickens for a few reasons, but it’s not because they have a chemical that causes kidney failure!
The main “danger” of grapes for chickens is the fact that they are about 81% water. Chickens do not effectively digest and process foods that are high in water content, so too many grapes can cause a few health problems. Fortunately, the most common problems are only diarrhea and indigestion, so it isn’t a serious hazard. However, excessive feeding of grapes could theoretically result in severe dehydration and death.
Grapes are also high in sugar, which isn’t very healthy for chickens — an animal that tends to eat dry low-sugar foods. This could result in rapid weight gain which is almost never healthy. Moderation is key when it comes to feeding grapes!
Despite the downsides, grapes still have some great benefits! Chickens absolutely love them, making them a fun addition to any diet. They also have quite a few different vitamins, providing chickens with some nutrients that they might not get a lot of otherwise.
How To Properly Feed Grapes To Your Chicken
Chicken owners have taken notes on how exactly they safely feed grapes to their chickens. First and foremost, the most common piece of advice is to consider either drying out the grapes or just buying raisins for their chickens! Raisins will provide the same great taste as grapes but without the very high water content.
You also need to know that your chicken’s core diet should be fully optimized before feeding them treats like grapes. This fruit does provide some nutritional value, but it’s nowhere near the value that a quality chicken feed provides. Only worry about snacks once your chicken’s diet is locked down.
Chicken also need to be able to chew up their food or else they won’t get any nutritional value. Since they don’t have any teeth, and because of the fact that grapes can be tough to fully chew up, you should cut up the grapes for them. A grape cut into 4 pieces is typically small enough for them to eat without problems.