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Bee Healthy Backyard Chicken Treat!

July 10, 2018 by Maat

Bee Healthy Backyard Chicken Treat!

I’m so excited about this week’s treat for backyard chickens because it contains one of my favorite superfoods: BEE POLLEN!

Table of Contents (Quickly Jump To Information)

  • I’m so excited about this week’s treat for backyard chickens because it contains one of my favorite superfoods: BEE POLLEN!
  • Bee Pollen for Backyard Chickens
  • Peppermint, Rose, and Parsley, Oh My!
  • Don’t Forget The Mealworms!
  • Bee Healthy Backyard Chicken Treat
    • Ingredients (per chicken):
    • Directions:

 

Yep, you can feed bee pollen to chickens, and as I discuss below, it’s very healthy for your hens.

 

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One of my favorite ways to share this treat with my hens is by offering it in the spring, when my flock starts to consistently lay again.

 

The ground is muddy (yuck), which means the amount of parasites and bad bacteria that flourish in wet environments SKYROCKETS.

 

As your chickens hunt and peck (and poop), they’re going to naturally pick up parasites. (They need to invent chicken shoes.)

 

It’s gross, and even grosser when you look at it under a microscope.

 

Who wants a mouthful of eggs teeming with salmonella and who knows what? Not me!

 

That’s why I included bee pollen in this week’s treat for backyard chickens. You’ll be surprised how healthy it is!

Bee Pollen for Backyard Chickens

We’re just starting to recognize the health benefits of bee pollen for humans, but believe it or not, it’s been pretty well studied for chickens.

 

In case you didn’t know, bee pollen is one of those “superfoods” that contains not just a ton of vitamins and minerals, but also more protein than meat!

 

Multiple studies have been done to examine the health impacts of feeding bee pollen to chickens.

And the results are pretty interesting (if you want to fast version: it’s really healthy.)

 

As a feed additive, bee pollen shows signs of being a powerful way to prevent parasites and bad bacteria while increasing the overall health of the chicken.

 

In one study, chickens fed 35 grams of bee pollen per 1 kilo of feed showed more beneficial bacteria in their guts – which means a healthier bird overall.

 

This same study also showed that bee pollen reduced the amount of bad bacteria – meaning that bee pollen showed antibacterial properties.

 

In particular, bee pollen was shown to reduce the amount of K. oxytoca, a bacterium that can cause sepsis and colitis in people.

Multiple studies have shown that chickens with higher amounts of beneficial bacteria not only GREW better (because they weren’t battling bad bacteria like campylobacter as much) but LAID healthier eggs (because the eggs were less likely to be transmitters of bad bacteria like salmonella).

 

In another study, bee pollen was shown to increase the length of villi in the digestive tracts of chickens.

 

In case you didn’t know, the villi in digestive tracts allow people and animals to absorb nutrients as we digest.

 

So, longer villi have more surface area, which can mean it’s easier for your chicken to absorb nutrients – which means she’ll be healthier.

 

It’s a small difference, but a crucial one.

 

It helps that chickens LOVE to peck at the tiny bits of bee pollen!

 

Peppermint, Rose, and Parsley, Oh My!

I’ve also included peppermint in this treat for a similar reason: Peppermint has strong antibacterial qualities while also helping to settle tummies.

 

Rose, as well, is known for it’s soothing and skin-healing properties (that’s why you see it in so many lotions for people).

 

My chickens particularly love rose because it’s red — for some reason, red is a popular color with hens!

 

Parsley is one of my favorite “hidden gems” — it’s a humble herb we’ve relegated to garnish status, but it’s full of vitamins!

 

So, as your hens enjoy eating the bee pollen, they’ll also get lots of extra nutrients from the parsley.

 

Don’t Forget The Mealworms!

And, of course, mealworms! You might find that your hens go for the mealworms first, but rest assured, they’ll finish off the rest of the ingredients as well!

 

If you’re ready to make this treat, then grab the recipe below!

Bee Healthy Backyard Chicken Treat

Ingredients (per chicken):

½ tsp Bee pollen (buy in the store here)

1 tablespoon Peppermint (buy in the store here)

1 tablespoon Parsley (buy in the store here)

¼ cup Mealworms (buy in the store here)

1 tablespoon Rose buds (buy in the store here)

¼ cup Non-GMO Wheat Berries (buy in the store here)

 

Directions:

Combine ingredients in a bowl and offer immediately. Serve as part of a complete diet alongside grit.

 

Filed Under: Chickens Tagged With: bee pollen, chicken treats, Chickens, mealworms, parsley, peppermint, roses, wheat, worms

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Diane Lakata says

    April 4, 2018 at 9:47 pm

    Can the bee pollen be added to their ‘mash’ (fermented feed)?

    • Maat says

      April 6, 2018 at 2:47 am

      Yes!

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  • We've added several new mugs and tumblers to our shop this week. I'm excited because this is a project we've had in the works for a while!
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I think the backyard chicken life should be celebrated. Chickens are such wonderful pets!
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I love taking these mugs with me to the coop (filled with hot chocolate since I can't drink coffee) and spending some quiet time with my flock before the day really begins!
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Featured: "Life Is Better On The Farm" mug. Link in profile.
  • I have a love /hate relationship with this tiny rooster. He's all of 3 inches high but loves to attack my feet. I seriously have no idea why.
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He's a rescue and I'm pretty sure the reason I got him is because, to someone not experienced with chickens, he can be scary.
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But I wear boots in my coop all the time. So, he's essentially a mosquito. It's pretty cute.
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Sometimes he wanders off and I have to catch him. He doesn't like that, and protests loudly. But he doesn't attack me. He just squaks loudly.
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But when I have a treat? He's my best friend. What a character!
  • Well we've been battling an ice storm for the past couple days (which is why you didn't hear from me yesterday). Unfortunately, on Saturday, the wind blew the door to my coop shut, so the fluffy butts had to deal with the ice and wind.
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It was so icy here that several telephone poles bent, and the electric wires were nearly on the ground (not on our farm, on a main road).
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About half my flock was wet and cold and shivering. So, everyone went into dog crates and into the cabin, where I could run a heater safely.
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The worst of the lot - my 2 cochin bantam hens - also got their feathers blown dry.
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I don't regularly blow dry my flock, but these 2 hens LOVED it! They just sat there while the hair dryer was on low heat, and enjoyed hanging out with me.
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I think they liked the warmth - they were pretty cold after all! They got plenty of WormBGone (which has warming herbs in it) and their layer feed that we blend ourselves, so they were happy!
  • I'm happy to tell you that reader Diane reports her rooster, Victor, is doing much better after an episode of mysterious blindness. .
Diane emailed me a week ago to ask advice to help Victor out. He suddenly went blind, without much explanation.
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There's a lot of reasons why any animal can go blind temporarily, and Diane did the best thing, which is consult a veterinarian. .
I'm glad to hear Victor's sight has returned, and he's back with his lovely girlfriends in their coop, just in time for Valentine's Day! ❤
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I'll be sending Victor and his girlfriends some BEE A Happy Hen to celebrate!
  • Now that the days are getting longer, it looks like I need to remove even more young roosters from the main coop. There were 3 that didn't cause any trouble over winter (very pretty ones, too), but now that spring is clearly on everyone's mind, they're bothering the hens too much.
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Most of these roosters are ones I bred - Easter Egger mixes that have pea combs and beards. They're very pretty!
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In the tornado last week, one of my temporary coops lost its life, so I'll probably use pieces of that to complete a new coop for these roosters, and give each one a couple ladies.
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I have a feeling by the end of this year, we'll be over run with lovely, bearded chickens. These guys do carry the blue egg laying gene - one's mother was Mama who laid olive colored eggs and the other's mother was Hawk who laid blue eggs).
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If paired with hens who carry the gene, their offspring might lay colored eggs as well.
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We're still getting green eggs from someone (I still haven't figured out who), and I think when the remainder of the roosters leave the coop, it'll prompt my other hens to start laying.
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And this year, I'm having Black Copper Marans hens sent to me, so pretty soon, we should have very colorful egg baskets every morning!

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