Can Chickens Eat Flax Seeds? What the Omega-3 Egg Trials Fed

Yes, chickens can eat flax seeds. Flax is safe as a treat, and it’s the seed used in the United States and Canada to make omega-3 eggs. The catch is the amount. The hens in the trials I read got flax as 5 to 15 percent of everything they ate, every day, for weeks or months. A sprinkle in the run is a nice extra, but it’s nowhere near that.

I rewrote this page from 15 sources, and you’ll find every one at the bottom. Most of the hen numbers come from seven feeding trials in Poultry Science and British Poultry Science. I read their abstracts on PubMed. Feedipedia (the big animal feed database) fills in the rest with its two flax pages, along with Dr. Jacquie Jacob’s flax pages for the University of Kentucky and eOrganic. For how much a hen eats and how big a treat should be, I used extension feeding guides. USDA’s food data gave me the spoon weights.

A word on the photos. The dish of seeds at the top sits in a seed display at the Osaka Museum of Natural History. Three of the photos come from a USDA visit to a farm in Oklahoma, and the laying hens at feeding time are in Kampala, Uganda.

The short version.

• Yes, flax seed is safe for hens as a treat, whole or ground.
• Omega-3 eggs took a lot of it. At 10 percent of the diet, a trial hen ate about 1 to 1.5 tablespoons of seed a day, by my math.
• Bigger eggs and thicker shells: the trials I read didn’t show that overall, and one found smaller eggs.
• Feed it dry. Skip the overnight soak, because Feedipedia says raw seed is riskiest when it’s wetted before feeding.
• Keep it out of the brooder. Feedipedia says flax’s gummy part can hold animals back, young birds especially.
• How much: all treats together should stay around 10 to 15 grams a hen a day, by my math from two extension guides. Flax is just one of them.
• Industrial linseed oil isn’t food. Kentucky’s flax page says it isn’t suitable for animals or people.

What Flax Seed Brings to a Hen

Linseed and flax seed are the same thing. Feedipedia lists both names for one seed, so a bag labeled either way holds the same food.

What makes flax special is its fat. Feedipedia calls linseeds “the richest source of omega-3 fatty acids among oil seeds”. Kentucky’s flax page says oil makes up 35 to 45 percent of the seed, and 45 to 52 percent of that oil is alpha-linolenic acid. That’s the plant omega-3, ALA for short.

Here’s what one level tablespoon of whole flax seed holds, from USDA’s food data. The tablespoon weighs 10.3 grams.

• About 55 calories.
• About 4.3 grams of fat, 2.3 grams of it ALA.
• About 1.9 grams of protein.
• About 2.8 grams of fiber.

Is that a protein boost? Not really. The same 10.3 grams of a 16 percent layer feed carries about 1.6 grams of protein, so flax has only a little more. Feedipedia goes further. It says that in poultry, linseeds are “of a lesser nutritional value compared to other oilseeds”, and it blames the seed’s physical structure and its low lysine. A few compounds in the seed also get in the way of digestion. So flax isn’t in hen feed for its protein. Feedipedia says linseed has drawn a lot of attention since the 1990s because of the omega-3 in its oil.

The fat is the part I’d watch. UC Davis’s feeding guide says chickens don’t need much fat and tells you to avoid fatty foods. By USDA’s numbers, flax seed is 42 percent fat. That’s the main reason I keep it small.

The Omega-3 Eggs Came From 10 Percent Diets

The egg claim is real. Kentucky’s flax page says “Feeding flaxseed to laying hens results in a six- to eight-fold increase in the omega-3 fatty acid content of eggs”. It adds that one of those eggs matches 113 grams (4 ounces) of cold-water fish as a source of omega-3s.

Look at how the trials got there, though. Feedipedia says flax raises the omega-3 in eggs “at levels starting from 5%”, and the trials it lists ran from 7.5 percent of the diet to as high as 20. Kentucky’s own example is a diet that’s 10 percent flax. In Scheideler and Froning’s 1996 trial, ALA made up these shares of the yolk’s fatty acids:

• 2.31 percent on a 5 percent flax diet.
• 4.18 percent at 10 percent flax.
• 6.83 percent at 15 percent flax.

Percent of the diet means percent of everything the hen eats, mixed into her feed. So I did the math. Alabama’s extension guide says a laying hen eats 100 to 150 grams of feed a day. Ten percent of that is 10 to 15 grams of flax, about 1 to 1.5 level tablespoons of whole seed, every day for weeks. Feedipedia’s 5 percent starting point is 5 to 7.5 grams, or about 1.5 to 2 teaspoons.

Now compare that with a treat. If you scatter one tablespoon for six hens, each one gets about 1.7 grams. That’s a nice snack, but it’s a sixth or less of what one trial hen ate at 10 percent. I couldn’t find a study that tested amounts that small, so I wouldn’t count on a sprinkle to change your eggs.

The hen matters too. Jacob’s eOrganic page says the gain depends on the strain of hen and on her age. The rest of her diet counts as well. In one trial from Scheideler’s group, hens put more than twice as much ALA in their yolks at 58 weeks of age as at 36 weeks (5.61 against 2.52 percent).

Bigger Eggs and Thicker Shells? Not in the Trials

An earlier version of this page promised bigger eggs with thicker shells. I went looking for a trial that backs that up and didn’t find one. Here’s what the studies I read reported.

• Scheideler and Froning (1996), Leghorn hens on 5 to 15 percent flax for 8 weeks: the hens ate less and gained less, and their eggs weighed less than the control hens’ eggs. They did lay more often (88.9 percent against 83.1).
• Bean and Leeson (2003), 256 brown and white hens on 10 percent flax from 28 to 53 weeks of age: no difference in egg production or egg weight, and none in shell weight or shell thickness. Their yolks were lighter, and the hens ate less and weighed less.
• Novak and Scheideler (2001), 10 percent flax from 21 to 57 weeks: overall egg weight didn’t change, though the flax eggs ran a little heavier in the last phase (62.6 grams against 61.44). The shell’s share of the egg was a little lower on flax, 12.4 percent against 12.6.

Brown flax did beat golden in one comparison. In the second part of Scheideler and Froning’s study, brown flaxseed gave heavier eggs and more of them than the golden kind. That’s one six-week trial, so I’d call it a tiebreaker, not a reason to hunt for brown seed.

Then there’s the taste. Feedipedia cites a 1992 study where 36 percent of the tasters’ ratings found a fishy flavor in eggs from flax-fed hens. Trained panels have also picked out flax eggs by their flavor and smell. Those were trial diets. A pinch in the run is a different thing, but no study I found tested that.

If more eggs is the goal, flax isn’t the lever. Our page on Rhode Island Red egg production goes through what does move the count, from the strain to winter light.

Why the Trials Stayed Under 10 Percent

Flax has limits even in a ration that scientists balance by the gram. Feedipedia says “inclusion rates over 10% can hamper performance”, and some researchers recommend keeping linseed below 10 percent. Jacob’s eOrganic page cites a trial where 15 percent flax raised the omega-3 in eggs but brought a significant drop in egg production.

The liver is where the studies disagree. Kentucky’s page says “long-term use of flaxseed has been shown to increase the level of liver hemorrhages in laying hens”, and that the cause is unclear. Bean and Leeson saw more liver hemorrhages in their flax hens. But Cherian and Hayat fed 10 percent flax to 120 ISA Brown hens from 32 to 64 weeks of age, and those hens ended up with less fat in their livers and blood. In a study by Schuman and colleagues, hemorrhages showed up whether the hens got flax or not. Jacob’s eOrganic page adds that vitamin E “may be needed” to cut the oxidation products in flax-fed hens’ livers.

Every one of those findings comes from 10 percent diets fed for months. None of them tells you anything about a sprinkle. It’s still why I keep flax a treat and not a feed ingredient.

Two more things in the seed weigh most on young birds:

• Linatine. Feedipedia says it works against vitamin B6, and broilers fed linseeds have shown signs of B6 deficiency.
• Mucilage, the gummy carbohydrate that turns boiled flax into a thick, gluey mass. Feedipedia says it soaks up water and thickens what’s in the gut, which “can result in reduced performance in livestock, notably in young birds”. Its linseed meal page adds sticky droppings in poultry.

So I’d leave flax out of the brooder. Our page on what baby chicks can eat covers treats for the little ones.

For grown hens, the feed itself is the main course. UC Davis says to “treat the scraps like a treat not like the main course”, because the feed is balanced and the scraps aren’t. Our chicken feed calculator shows how many pounds of feed your flock goes through in a week.

Whole and Dry: How I’d Give It

Whole or ground? For a treat, whole is fine. Aymond and Van Elswyk fed whole and ground flax at 5 and 15 percent. At 5 percent, the seed’s form made no difference to the omega-3 in the yolk. Only at 15 percent did ground flax put more in. Scheideler and Froning found no difference between whole and ground seed in egg production, and they concluded flax “can be safely added whole to layer diets up to 15%”. Feedipedia does note one trial where grinding gave heavier eggs, and it says crushing, grinding or heating is recommended to get more out of linseed. For a pinch on the ground, I don’t think that’s worth the bother.

What I’d skip is the overnight soak. Feedipedia explains that immature linseeds carry compounds that can release hydrogen cyanide when they’re wet and warm, at 40 to 50°C. It warns that unprocessed seed can be toxic to animals, “especially if the seed or the cake is wetted before being fed”. Its fix is the opposite of a cold soak. You drop the seed into water that’s already boiling and boil it for at least five minutes. That leaves a thick, gluey mass, and I wouldn’t hand that to a hen. Dry seed is simpler.

Here’s how I’d give it:

• Dry, whole seed sold as food, scattered on the ground or mixed in with the other treats.
• A little at first. Feedipedia lists bringing linseed in gradually as one way to ease its downsides, and Bean and Leeson phased it in and out of their hens’ feed too.
• No more than your flock cleans up in 5 to 10 minutes. Colorado State says leftovers draw nuisance animals.
• Inside the treat budget. Colorado State says treats should be no more than 10 percent of the daily diet. With Alabama’s feed numbers, that’s 10 to 15 grams a hen a day for all treats together, flax included.

Alabama’s guide is blunter than I am. It says treats “should be used sparingly or not at all”, because hens given too many fill up on them and don’t eat enough of their complete feed. Flax doesn’t get a pass on that just because it has omega-3.

Want to check another pantry food before it goes in the run? Our Can Chickens Eat It? checker gives you a quick answer. Seeds from the same shelf, like dried peas and lentils, have their own rules. Our list of what not to feed chickens covers the foods to keep away entirely.

Where Flax Seed Comes From, and the Oil That Isn’t Food

Flax wasn’t brought to North America for its seed at all. Kentucky’s page says it came “for its stem fiber, which was used in the making of linen and paper”. Today it’s grown in the United States and Canada as an oil crop.

That oil comes with a warning. Linseed oil is pressed from the seed and then pulled out with a petroleum solvent, and Kentucky says “Industrial linseed oil is not suitable for animal or human consumption”. What’s left after the oil comes out becomes linseed meal for animal feed. Feedipedia says the meal’s gums cause sticky droppings in poultry, and it puts the ceiling for the meal at 10 percent of a layer’s diet.

So the flax for your hens is plain seed sold as food. Keep it dry, and hand it out a little at a time.

Sources

• Feedipedia: Linseeds (INRAE and partners, the animal feed resources database).
• Feedipedia: Linseed meal.
• Jacquie Jacob, University of Kentucky: Flax Seed in Poultry Diets (poultry.extension.org).
• Jacquie Jacob, eOrganic: Including Flax Seed in Organic Poultry Diets (October 23, 2013).
• Aymond and Van Elswyk (1995), Poultry Science 74:1388 (whole and ground flax at 5 and 15 percent, the abstract on PubMed).
• Scheideler and Froning (1996), Poultry Science 75:1221 (flax levels, whole against ground, brown against golden).
• Scheideler and colleagues (1998), Poultry Science 77:192 (strain, diet and hen age).
• Bean and Leeson (2003), Poultry Science 82:388 (10 percent flax from 28 to 53 weeks).
• Novak and Scheideler (2001), Poultry Science 80:1480 (egg production and shell quality).
• Cherian and Hayat (2009), Poultry Science 88:2555 (liver lipids on 10 percent flax).
• Schuman and colleagues (2000), British Poultry Science 41:465 (flax and fatty liver haemorrhagic syndrome).
• Colorado State University Extension: Raising Poultry the Organic Way (disease control and feeding).
• Alabama Cooperative Extension System: Feeding the Laying Hen (ANR-2913).
• UC Davis and UC Cooperative Extension: Feeding Your Flock (PDF).
• USDA FoodData Central (SR Legacy 169414, seeds, flaxseed).

Sources checked October 26, 2026. The gram and spoon math is mine, from Colorado State’s 10 percent and Alabama’s feed numbers, with USDA’s spoon weights. We aren’t vets. If a hen looks sick, call a vet who sees poultry.

Related read: How to Raise Chickens for Eggs — Instant PDF download. Secure checkout by Stripe