Free ranging chickens and mushrooms??

One area I was going to put my nuggets for their paddock rotation has quite a bit of mushrooms growing in it.  I don't know mushrooms at all (not a fan of eating them anyway).  Are mushrooms generally ok or no?  We're in the northern Puget Sound, and the mushrooms are growing in the lawn.

Hello Andrew!

It may be wise to find out what type of mushrooms they are, so you can determine if they are potentially poisonous. This is of course in the chance your chickens decide to eat any, it avoids the potential of loosing birds. I've never heard of people loosing birds to poisonous mushrooms, but it may be wise to use caution, since mushrooms are a great source of many hard to find nutrients laying hens could definitely benefit from.

I would talk to someone in a mycology society around your area, and see if you can set up a meeting to take them specimens and spore prints to identify the species and any potential toxicity. You can probably do a serch online, and get ahold of someone local whos willing to help, and they may even be able to do it with carefully taken pictures of the specimens and spore prints. Once you know they're not harmful, which I would guess they're not, you can graze your chickens on that pasture without worry, and who knows, you may even find out you can eat them too.

Hope that helps!

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it. I subscribe to the notion that animals, when not pushed by hunger, can decide perfectly well for themselves what they should or should not eat.  In my experience, even decidedly "poisonous" plants don't pose much of a problem.  My cows eat poison hemlock like candy.  I don't know why mushrooms would be any different.

R. Steele wrote:...since mushrooms are a great source of many hard to find nutrients laying hens could definitely benefit from.

These are meat chickens.  Otherwise, thanks for the info.  I'll see about identifying the mushrooms and see what I have.

Wes Hunter wrote:Personally, I wouldn't worry about it. I subscribe to the notion that animals, when not pushed by hunger, can decide perfectly well for themselves what they should or should not eat.  In my experience, even decidedly "poisonous" plants don't pose much of a problem.  My cows eat poison hemlock like candy.  I don't know why mushrooms would be any different.

Good perspective.

We have free ranged both meat birds and layers. We figured the same as Wes Hunter that they could decide what to eat.  Most of the birds ignored the mushrooms except for the RIR and Brahmas. There were no casualties from the chickens eating them.

We might be able to give you some suggestions if you post pictures of top,bottom, and a vertical slice. Some are very easy to ID, but some are very difficult.

Every kind of mushroom tastes differently. If all you’ve tried is button mushrooms, you might find one you like. Some are deadly though.

After this weekend I should be able to post some pics.  Been distracted by the corvid attacks, so this issue went on the back burner.  Heading to a church men's retreat tomorrow through Sunday.

This is a good site for basic ID. Since you aren’t in this part of the country, I wouldn’t trust it completely. You might have a look a like that we don’t.

https://nature.mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/search?f%5B0%5D=field_fg_types:5589