Can Chickens Eat Yogurt? (Nutrition, Pros and Cons & Feeding Tips)

Chickens are known to like and eat a lot of food. In fact, they have their own unique and beaming energy when it comes to eating. While solid food has been the basic and common form for their consumption, chicken owners can also ask, “Can chickens eat yogurt?” Obviously, Humans love it; how about chickens?

Do Chickens Like Yogurt?

The answer is yes. Despite the not-much-solid form of yogurt, unlike any other basic chicken food, chickens actually like eating yogurt. Although, like any other food, yogurts need to be eaten in moderation as well.

Yogurt and Its Good Stuff For Chickens

While yogurt is clearly not the apparent type of chicken meal for chickens, it has quite a variety of nutrition to offer your chickens. Some of the main things that are good in a chicken are as follows.

• Fats – Yogurt can contain a good amount of fats. In fact, yogurt can include at least 8g of fats. When there are fats, there’s also a good amount of extra like carbohydrates and calories. Fat helps absorb fat-soluble vitamins like vitamins A, D, E, and K. In most chicken feed, they are present to make the food more palatable, more delicious, and fun.
• Calcium – Milk products, of course, contain calcium. Calcium has been famously attached to the concept of bone nutrition which is very much true. This nutrient is beneficial for your chicken’s growth and development. One more thing about calcium is that it is also a significant component of eggshells. Therefore, when you are raising a flock for eggs, calcium is non-negotiable for your egg layers.
• Proteins – Proteins are made up of smaller units called amino acids. The blood soaks up these things and is delivered to different cells that convert these into the necessary nutrients needed by the creature’s body. Proteins are basically the engines for growth. They help develop and construct muscles, cartilage, nerves, skin, feathers, beaks, etc.
• Good Bacteria and Probiotics – These good nutrients help fight against and destroy harmful bacteria in the body.

These are just some of the many nutrients found in yogurts. There are also minor nutrients that are helpful for your chicken’s growth and development properly. Yogurt also contains

• Potassium
• Zinc
• Magnesium
• Vitamins
• Phosphorus

Unlike the major ones, these nutrients range from mild to minor quantities per a certain amount of yogurt.

100g Yogurt Nutrition Chart

Nutrient	Amount (per 100g)	Benefits for Chickens
Protein	3.5g	Muscle development, feather growth
Fat	3.3g	Energy source, healthy skin and feathers
Carbohydrate	4.7g	Energy source
Calcium	120mg	Strong bones and eggshell formation
Phosphorus	95mg	Strong bones and eggshell formation
Potassium	155mg	Electrolyte balance, heart health
Magnesium	12mg	Bone health, metabolic function
Vitamin A	75IU	Vision, immune system, skin health
Vitamin D	0.5µg	Bone health, calcium absorption
Riboflavin (B2)	0.2mg	Energy production
B12	0.75µg	Nervous system health

Feeding Yogurt To Your Chickens

Preparing food can always be creative. It’s not too good to stick to one thing for so long. This applies to your chickens too. They need variety in their meals, and they have fun trying out new things just like how people do.

Adding yogurt to one of their treats or snacks every now and then is very welcome as long as it abides by certain limitations so as to keep your chicken safe from having too much of something that could be unhealthy to them.

Plain yogurt over any other yogurt is the best choice. In fact, plain yogurt is the only type that’s recommended for chickens. Yogurts can undergo different processes, and so flavored yogurts usually undergo different procedures.

They are given extra ingredients like flavoring, artificial sweeteners, and other artificial stuff that take away some of the original nutrients. Apart from the addition of these substances, chickens are also incapable of digesting these components.

Chickens are different from humans. It’s advantageous to think about these when feeding them any food. What’s safe for humans cannot always be the same for chickens. They are built differently, and so they also require and prohibit different things.

When feeding your flock anything, it’s essential to make sure that you are not overfeeding them. This remains true for yogurt, especially because yogurt is a dairy product.

Chickens do not have the required amount of enzymes to digest yogurt and other dairy products. In the same way, flavored yogurt causes diarrhea and lousy gut health to your chickens, and plain yogurt being overly served will also result in the same problem and more.

In any case, do not ever feed your chickens spoiled yogurt! This is also true for a lot of food on the menu for your chickens. Spoiled and smelly yogurt from the fridge can contain harmful elements that can harm your chickens and may even turn fatal for them. Fresh yogurt is always the best and recommended choice.

How Much Yogurt is Good?

In feeding your chickens yogurt, you need to remember that it’s not an everyday routine. Yogurts and other snacks are on the list of food that should be fed now and then, but never permanently.

Small amounts of yogurt once to twice per week is okay for your chickens. On the other hand, yogurt can be pretty pricey to have frequently anyway. But, when opting for it as a treat, the recommended amount is no more than ¾ cup per serving.

Yogurt is healthy only when they are given in moderation. Therefore, giving more and overfeeding your chickens yogurt will only harm them rather than help them. Yes, they may like yogurt, but in preventing them from eating so much, you, as an owner, are doing them a favor.

Chicken Age	Yogurt	Frequency
0-8 weeks	0-5 g	Occasionally
8-20 weeks	5-10 g	Weekly
20+ weeks	10-15 g	2-3 times/week

Cleanliness In Feeding Yogurt

Another thing to note is the composition and form of yogurts. These are not solid like the feeds, corn, wheat, and other food you feed your chickens. It’s important to note that yogurts are borderline gelatin-like, smooth, creamy, and flowy.

You can place yogurt lumps onto any type of ground. However, it will be helpful to have a shallow dish or a bowl of some sort too. This will help emphasize the yogurt’s white color and also avoid making a mess of the space. Lumps of yogurts on grassy areas are also okay, as the grass can filter splatters from your chicken’s pecks.

If you are placing the chunks on plain ground, it must be best to stay far from them as they eat their treat unless you are okay to get splattered a bit. It would also be helpful not to get the lumps so big and high that your chicken’s face can be submerged.

They do not have the tongue or the arms to make use of and wipe the stains off their face, so they may panic for a while as they shake it off. In feeding them, it’s always good to make sure you are helping rather than creating challenges.

How to Prepare Yogurt for Your Chickens

Yogurt is, first and foremost, a dairy product. It’s a mixture of milk fermented by a specific type of culture. This culture is responsible for the production of lactic acid. Overall, milk undergoes quite a handful of processes before becoming yogurt. The following are some of the main methods or steps in producing yogurt.

• Standardization of fat
• Dry matter enrichment (adding milk powder or concentration)
• Pasteurization
• Homogenization
• Inoculation (This is also where lactic ferments are added)

After the following processes, there are two ways the whole production can continue. One is to make set yogurt, and the other is stirred yogurt. For set yogurt, the following processes follow.

• Conditioning
• Over fermentation
• Tunnel cooling
• Cold storage

The other set of processes is to produce stirred yogurt. Here are the following steps for stirred yogurt.

• Fermentation in tanks
• Coagulum stirring
• Cooling
• Conditioning
• Cold storage

Summary

Chickens like to have a variety of food on their menu. Their menu is not just limited to solid foods but also diversity! Can chickens eat yogurt? The answer is yes, of course. Their diet is flexible, and they make room for a lot of surprising things like yogurt. It’s good to add yogurt to their list of treats now and then.