Feeding chickens bread

One of my nephews works with a bread company. The company has outlet stores where they sell the day old bread. They take the mashed bread and loaves that the bags has been torn and put them in shopping carts and sell the bread at a good price or we think it's a good price. William and I were talking about buying some and putting it in the refrigerator we have in the storage building and feeding it to our chickens. Of course we would use it as a supplement along with the other feed we give them.

He wants to feed the bread to our ducks and geese but I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not.

Is it good for the chickens to have the bread along with their regular feed? Also, is it safe to feed bread to ducks and geese? I don't want to give them something that will harm them.

If we feed bread to the chickens we will cut back on their regular feed. They would be getting some of the corn, laying crumbles, bread and also roaming around in the chicken yard scratching for bugs. We also feed them all the grass cuttings and kitchen scraps including egg shells. They get oyster shells too. Does this sound healthy enough for them to continue to lay as well as they are now?

A small cart of bread is $3.00 and a large one is $6.00. There's probably at least 25-30 loaves in the large carts.

Thanks.

My chickens get bread in with kitchen scraps. I know lots of people feed some bread to their chickens with no ill results. The only thing I have ever been told to not feed my chickens is apples because if they are not used to them it can cause some chickens to stop laying. Not all, I know, but some. I do have friends that give apples to their chickens. So I'm not sure if it's just an old wive's tale or not. But I would say as long as they are still geting their laying feed and the fact that they are allowed to free range some...I doubt the bread will hurt them.

We feed our chickens everything except chocolate. As for the ducks and geese, they should do fine with some bread too. We use to take bread down to a lake near us when we lived in Florida to feed to the ducks. We just tossed it in the water and they really enjoyed it. We've also thrown bread to some wild geese.

PlainFolk, we feed our chickens apples and they love them. Never noticed a difference in their laying.

When I had the chickens I always gave them kitchen scraps, including the apple peelings from when I was making pie or applesause. I had Barred Rocks and they never stopped laying. I got them on the 4th of May (I remember that because it was my Daddy's birthday and I had him up for dinner) and they started laying in September and at one point early in the spring we had about 15 dozen eggs in the refrigerator. We were giving them away. I could have put a sign out front and probably sold them but never thought of that.

Thank you all for the input. I throw apple cores and seeds into our kitchen scraps and feed that to the chickens.

Next time we have to go to Meridian I will call ahead to see if they have a cart of the bread and we'll stop and get it. One of the clerks told me that people buy small freezers just to have to freeze the bread for their animals. I overheard one person talking about feeding the bread to their goats.

If buying the bread will help supplement the regular feed it sure would help out. Feed is getting outrageous in price around here and we don't have acreage to plant food for our chickens and other birds. Sure wish we did.

Thanks again.

When we had our pygmy goats we had a buck that LOVED bread. That's what he's previous owner use to feed his goats for treats.

With all the rain and flooding we had here last year a lot of the farmers lost a lot of their corn crop. Some of them were buying brewer's grain and feeding that to the cows and one I know of was feeding his dairy cows bread from local stores that was out dated.