You never know unless you try.
We already have a long list of snacks that have passed the chicken taste test — yogurt, spaghetti, bread, oatmeal, strawberries, raspberries, kale, lettuce, sprouts, dandelion greens, etc. — but on Monday, I decided to try expanding the menu.
After doing a bit of research to make sure my experiments would be safe, I pulled a few basil leaves from the garden, tore them into smaller pieces, and gave them to “the girls.” Later that day, at my suggestion, Liz hand-fed banana bits to the hens.
The results were mixed.
The basil was not a big hit. Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, nibbled away at it, but without showing any real enthusiasm. Snow our Plymouth Rock, took one bite, lifted her beak in seeming disgust and stormed over to the water bowl, as if to wash a bad taste from her mouth.
But the banana was another story. All three chickens could not get enough, fast enough. So we’ve added it to our mental list of fave foods.
As it happens, there’s an added advantage to giving chickens a banana snack: it’s very entertaining to watch them tackle the fruit.
A banana, being a banana, is mushy. A chicken, being a chicken, picks up her food with her beak. The end result is that only part of the banana actually works its way into the hen. She ends up wearing the rest of it, in the form of a gooey coating slathered across her beak.
A wit on an online chicken forum has described this comical effect as a case of "banana lips." Which is all the more amusing because chickens, being chickens, have no lips.
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