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You know, I was convinced that my chickens would eat any leftovers from the fridge that were about to go bad, but the one thing that they wouldn’t touch was mushrooms. I didn’t realize that the reason for that went all the way back to the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs.

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tetris11@lemmy.ml ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I mean maybe haha - I think they’ve adapted to eat them just fine since then

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happybadger@hexbear.net ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
For what it’s worth, they and other livestock love mycelium from culinary species like Pleurotus ostreatus. The substrate is healthy myceliated straw/grain with the complex carbs predigested by the fungi and it has immune system benefits for them: openagriculturejournal.com/…/e187433152305260.pdf

My ideal homestead revolves around around multi-tiered green recycling using them. The fungi break down the garden waste that the chickens won’t eat, the unproductive mushroom colonies go to the chickens and pigeon towers, the manure and eggshells go into the vermicomposter and garden. Those mushroom colonies are a major cash crop with a myriad of health benefits depending on what you’re growing.

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neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
That’s a cool fact, do you have a source I could check out and read through? I tried some light web searching but couldn’t find anything saying this.

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- YoiksAndAway@lemmy.zip ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  No, it was just an observation about the backyard chickens I used to have. I have no idea if my chickens couldn’t eat mushrooms or if they just didn’t care for them.
  
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  - neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    ahh, that makes sense, thanks. Yeah, in what brief research I did, it does appear like there are a lot of mushrooms that aren’t safe for chickens and lizards, possibly due to their biological differences, but that there were still a good number of mushrooms they could eat.
    
    The interesting thing you were alluding to is that they have some biological instinct to not eat shrooms because maybe it wiped a lot of them out at one point. That’d be super cool to link :)
    
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