Feeding chickens meat scraps

Hi everyone! We just started our new poultry flock with 20 laying hens, 20 broilers and 4 ducks  . I used to work at a restaurant in town and have been taking all of their veggie scraps for the past year and I am starting to wonder if taking the meats scraps for chicken feed could be a good thing as well.

I have read many different accounts online saying it is both good and bad so I am looking here to see if anyone has any insight.  I would have access to Chicken, Pork, and Beef scraps... but probably won't feed my chickens... chicken.

Chooks will be overjoyed with any meat you give them .
I've seen them tuck into one of there ex-flockmate's remains that mistakenly ended up in their dinner. Not a problem for me, or them either, as far as I know.
What are you comfortable feeding your chooks, and therefore yourself?
Do you know where the meat comes from?
I avoid industrial pork and chicken and I presume if you're in the USA, any meat that's not labelled 'grass fed' is CAFO.
We don't have CAFOs here and if I've got anything to do with it, we never will!
It's a bit of an ethical, philosophical, health quandry...
Use what would otherwise be wasted?
I imagine all but the most expensive organic chook feed has many more negative impacts than what you're suggesting,and even then you have to take all sorts of other factors into account like industrial manufacture and transport.
I think I've nearly talked myself into it! Aside from the remaining potential for ethical, philosophical, health issues...

I saw one of my girls catch and eat a Gardner snake last summer, and if I toss an injured mouse in there (after taking it away from my evil housecat) they chase it down and eat it. They have been getting my kitchen meat/fat craps for almost a year now and seem to love it

In Salatins book he said they would throw in a deer carcass after butchering it and the chickens clean it to the bone.  I think he also said they would get other meat scraps as well.

Chickens, like humans, are omnivores.  In nature, their protein comes from bugs, slugs, and other thugs.  Protein is the costliest part of a chicken's diet.  If you have a free source of protein, by all means utilize it.  (If they are protein-deprived, they will resort to cannibalism to get it!)

I have used chickens to clean up turdal shells that i sold.
the old timers would feed racoon carcuses to the chickens in the winter to give them some fat.
I think of them as T rex's

We feed meat all the time to our chickens. In the summer most of their diet is insects on pasture but in the winter those get a bit scarce with the glaciers and cold so we replace that part of the chickens diet with meat from our pigs - we butcher every week.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop

I feed my chickens and turkeys all of the kitchen scraps and unwanted leftovers.

They get meat scraps all of the time, including things like stale chicken pot pie or turkey noodle soup.

We just maintain a "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- they don't ask what they're eating, so I don't tell them.

I worked in a restaurant until a couple years ago.  I would salvage whatever I could from the place, usually took home a couple of buckets of scraps.  One day the chef was cutting New York strips.  This cut of meat comes in with a thick layer of fat which is trimmed off.  I snatched it up, took it home, cut it into small pieces the hens could handle.  Gave them a fine treat every day for a couple of weeks.

If the birds eat a high percentage of meats and fats, their droppings will be less firm. 

They like spare or soured milk too

After a successful fishing trip (be the catch finned or shelled) I usually give the chickens the parts we do not consume ourselves. To be on the safe side I simmer it a bit in a little water on an outside stove to kill any possible parasites or bacteria first. I also grind up shrimp and crawfish hulls to make eating them and thier contents easier (hard shells from clams and oysters are made into supliments). My only concern about giving meat scraps from a restaurant would be any possible bacterial contamination and if I were doing it a little heat would be applied before I feed it to my chickens or anything else. I do feed my chickens all sorts of kitchen trimmings and leftovers (that are not eaten by us for lunch or even rehashed for the folowing night's meal) we produce including small pieces of meat although for the most part my dog gets any meat trimmings created during prep cooked especially for her. I know I could feed raw but she does occasionally lick me when excited with that mouth 

I have found my chickens to be delighted when offered all sorts of meat scraps. This can be anything from raw trimmings to fridge leftovers.

When possible, I will chunk up the meat for easier consumption but they will tear pieces from a larger hunk if needed.

Our free range chooks used to get half a kangaroo a week. They eat just about anything but like people, healthy diet is important. Years ago in a village in China a lot of people died from esophageal and throat cancer. Medical researchers tested for chemical residues, pollution, excessively hot food- everything they could think of. And then someone noticed that a number of their chickens had a cough- also throat cancer. Turned out that that particular village was known for their recipe for pickled cabbage. The leftovers went to the chooks. The result- a much higher than normal rate of Esophageal Squamus Cell Carcinoma. The study was back in the mid seventies I think. No idea if further studies were done or if those results were proved/ disproved.

yeah, I used to call my layers "little dinosaurs" and often imagined that if perchance I was knocked unconscious in their pen, I would likely wake up missing some parts!  Cooking does soften up meat scraps....and fresh roadkill, and makes it easier for them to peck apart.  Eventually I learned to carefully bleed out a sheep or goat when I butchered it into a big tray of chicken feed, whether cracked corn, or leached acorn, or dumpster popcorn, or whatever, and let it coagulate into it for an extra high protein treat.  They really do take "produce no waste" to the next level!

Alder Burns wrote:yeah, I used to call my layers "little dinosaurs" and often imagined that if perchance I was knocked unconscious in their pen, I would likely wake up missing some parts!  Cooking does soften up meat scraps....and fresh roadkill, and makes it easier for them to peck apart.  Eventually I learned to carefully bleed out a sheep or goat when I butchered it into a big tray of chicken feed, whether cracked corn, or leached acorn, or dumpster popcorn, or whatever, and let it coagulate into it for an extra high protein treat.  They really do take "produce no waste" to the next level!

It's all a matter of how you look at things Alder. I once asked a mate of mine why he didn't have chooks. He said Because everything with a beak dies in debt.

My chickies love it. This time of year my run can look like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie. They'll pick a carcass down to bare bones.

You all have wild little dinosaurs! There was a roadkill possum in front of my house so I tried to skin it and offered my flock the carcass. None of them seemed interested.
In the summer time dead animals attract flies in no time and some people let the chickens eat the maggots. But won't the high bacteria load and toxins from rotten meat make them sick?
I usually run into a dozen raccoons and opossums (roadkilled or trapped) by the house but have little way to use the meat directly and just end up burying them in ground.