Updated September 26, 2026. This page used to call dried peas and lentils “a nutritious little supplement” and say you never need to cook them. That’s half right, and the wrong half is the one that can hurt a bird: in a pantry, a bag of dried beans looks a lot like a bag of dried lentils. I’ve rewritten it to say exactly what the sources say, including the part where they seem to disagree.
The short answer: cook them. Cooked peas and lentils are a fine treat. Dried beans (kidney, pinto, black, navy) never go in raw, soaked or half-cooked. Colorado State University Extension tells backyard keepers to avoid undercooked or dried beans, and UC Davis lists raw beans among the foods that can be toxic. Peas and lentils aren’t the beans those warnings are about, and one extension source says field peas are fed raw in poultry rations all the time. But a scoop of whole dried lentils from your pantry isn’t a poultry ration, and cooking them costs you twenty minutes. For any other scrap, the free Can Chickens Eat It? checker gives the verdict and the source.
Where the sources seem to disagree
Here’s the honest version, because this is one of those questions where both “never raw” and “raw is fine” have a real source behind them.
- Colorado State University Extension: “Also avoid under cooked or dried beans, onions, and rhubarb.”
- UC Davis (Feeding your Flock): avoid feeding chickens “raw beans”, among other things that can be toxic.
- The University of Kentucky (Dr. Jacquie Jacob, on poultry.extension.org), writing about feed ingredients: field peas have low enough levels of the digestion-blocking compounds that they “can be included in diets without being roasted,” up to 40% of a layer diet, though “10% is a more practical level.” Lentils have “few digestive inhibitors” and off-grade lentils do go into livestock feed.
Read side by side, they don’t actually contradict each other. Kentucky is talking about ground field peas milled into a balanced ration by somebody who knows the numbers. Colorado State and UC Davis are talking about beans. And the same Kentucky guide says chickpeas carry compounds that interfere with digestion, most of which heat deactivates, and that faba beans’ compounds have limited their use in poultry feed.
So the dangerous word is beans. Raw kidney beans are the classic example. And a bag labeled “dried legumes” or “soup mix” usually has beans in it with the lentils.
Why I cook them anyway
Three reasons, none of them fancy.
First, I can’t tell at a glance which bag I grabbed. Split peas, red lentils, green lentils, a 15-bean soup mix. In the back of my pantry they all look like “dried stuff.” If the rule in my kitchen is “legumes get cooked before they go out,” I never have to get that call right.
Second, whole dried lentils are hard little stones. Chickens grind food in the gizzard with grit, and they’ll manage. But cooked lentils are soft, the whole flock eats them evenly, and nobody fills up on them in two minutes.
Third, it’s cheap to do. Red lentils go soft in about 20 minutes of simmering in plain water. No salt, no stock cube, no onion. onions are a no on their own. Let them cool before they go out.
How much
Cooked lentils and peas are a treat, not feed. Colorado State caps treats at 10% of what a hen eats in a day, and Alabama Extension puts that daily feed at 100 to 150 grams. So each hen gets 10 to 15 grams of extras, total. For my twelve that’s a couple of big spoonfuls of cooked lentils, spread out so the bottom of the pecking order gets some.
If you’re thinking of mixing dried peas into your own feed to save money, that’s a different job with its own numbers (protein, lysine, methionine, calcium), and it’s where Kentucky’s 10% figure comes from. Don’t just pour a bag of split peas into the layer pellets.
The quick list
- Cooked lentils, cooked split peas, cooked chickpeas: fine, as a treat.
- Frozen or fresh green peas: fine as they are. They’re a vegetable, not a dried pulse.
- Canned beans, rinsed: they’re already cooked through. Fine as a treat once the salty liquid’s rinsed off.
- Dried beans of any kind, raw or soaked: never.
- Half-cooked beans from a slow cooker that never got hot enough: never. Colorado State’s word is undercooked for a reason.
- Sprouted legumes: nobody I trust publishes an answer on sprouted beans for chickens, so I don’t feed them.
Sources
- Colorado State University Extension: Raising Poultry the Organic Way: Disease Control and Feeding (Howard Enos, December 2019, reviewed August 2025): avoid undercooked or dried beans; the 10% cap.
- UC Cooperative Extension / UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine: Feeding your Flock (Dr. Maurice Pitesky and Dr. Nancy Reimers): raw beans among foods that can be toxic.
- poultry.extension.org: Field Peas in Poultry Diets (Dr. Jacquie Jacob, University of Kentucky): no roasting needed; up to 40% of a layer diet, 10% practical.
- poultry.extension.org: Legumes in Poultry Feed (Dr. Jacquie Jacob, University of Kentucky): lentils have few digestive inhibitors; chickpeas’ antinutritional factors are mostly deactivated by heat.
- Alabama Cooperative Extension System: Feeding the Laying Hen (Pacheco, Gulizia & Downs, August 2022): 100 to 150 grams of feed a day.
Sources checked September 26, 2026. I keep chickens; I’m not a veterinarian.
Related read: How to Raise Chickens for Eggs — Instant PDF download. Secure checkout by Stripe
