No, I wouldn’t give your chickens loofah seeds, raw or roasted. The seeds are bitter. PROTA, the big reference on the useful plants of tropical Africa, says they “are also emetic and cathartic”. That’s the old way of saying they bring on vomiting and purging. PROTA files it with the seeds’ folk-medicine uses in people, not with a feeding trial. And in the one chicken feeding trial I could find, broilers ate less and grew less as more loofah seed meal went into their feed. Young green loofah is another story. Picked small, it’s a squash, and if a raw slice tastes mild, a few pieces are a fine treat (that part is my call). The dried sponge isn’t food at all.
I rewrote this page from 20 sources, and they’re all listed at the bottom. What loofah is, and what’s in its seeds, comes from Feedipedia (the feed database that French agricultural research bodies run with FAO) and from two PROTA entries. The chicken numbers come from a 2015 broiler trial in the Nigerian Journal of Animal Production, plus a rat study by the same lead author. The bitterness comes from a Nordic Council of Ministers review and two plant studies from Guangdong. What cooking does and doesn’t do comes from the National Capital Poison Center, France’s food safety agency ANSES and Tox Info Suisse. A lab report from Okinawa covers two bitter loofahs that people cooked. Growing and picking come from Clemson and Purdue, plus two University of Florida pages. Feeding a flock comes from Colorado State, Alabama Extension and the Merck Veterinary Manual, and the crop from Maryland Extension.
The old version of this page told a story I can’t back up. It opened with “my wife Bethany’s bath scrubber project” and seeds that went “into a big mason jar for storage”. The hens that ate them were “shaking their heads, backing away, and making alarmed clucking sounds”. Then came “I did some frantic googling”, almost a week without eggs, feathers that “looked dull and raggedy” and a rooster named Randolph who “stopped crowing altogether”. I can’t show any of it happened, so it’s gone.
Some of the advice went with it. It told you to “cook, bake, or roast peeled loofah gourds before feeding them to chickens”, and it said “The drying process helps remove toxins”. The National Capital Poison Center says the toxin in a bitter squash “is not inactivated by heat”, and I found nothing that says drying helps. It also called dried sponges “harmless to chickens once fully dried” and said to toss them in the run. No source I read backs that up. And it called the seeds “the life of the poultry party”, which, no.
A word on the photos. None of them shows a chicken eating loofah, because I couldn’t find a real photo of that I’d trust. So they show the plant and the sponge it turns into, plus a few birds. Four come from Flickr photographers who gave them to the public domain: Yu-Chan Chen, Jan Helebrant (two of his) and Tamsin Cooper. One comes from Anna Frodesiak on Wikimedia Commons and one from Karim Manjra on Unsplash. Every credit links to the photo’s own page.
The short version.
- Keep loofah seeds away from your flock, raw or roasted.
- In the one chicken trial, broilers on more seed meal ate less and gained less. Birds fed seed meal had heavier livers and spleens for their size, heaviest at 15 percent.
- The bitterness is cucurbitacin. Feed sources say heat helps, food safety sources say cooking doesn’t destroy it, and I’m not betting a hen on the difference.
- Shake sponge seeds out away from the run and store saved seed where hens can’t reach it.
- Young green loofah under six inches that tastes mild raw is a squash. A few pieces are a treat, my call.
- Bitter loofah, young or old, goes in the trash.
- The dried sponge is fiber, not food. It belongs in the compost, not the run.
- If a hen got into seeds and seems off, call a vet who sees poultry.
Loofah Seeds Look Like Good Feed on Paper
Loofah (or luffa, or sponge gourd) is the climbing gourd your bath sponge came from. Feedipedia puts it plainly: “When the fruit matures it becomes fibrous: the fibre is used as a sponge for washing by humans and scrubbing utensils”. You’ll run into two kinds in gardens, the smooth one and the angled (ridged) one. The University of Florida says “Both fruits are cucumber-like inside when immature, but then become fibrous with many flat, black seeds”.
Feedipedia describes those seeds as dull black and 10 to 12 millimeters long, a bit under half an inch. You’ll find plenty of them in every ripe fruit.
On paper, you’d think they’re great feed. Feedipedia says “Luffa seeds are rich in protein and oil but highly variable contents are reported”. Whole seeds run 25 to 30 percent protein and about as much fat, and dehulled seeds go as high as 40 percent protein. For comparison, Alabama Extension says laying hens “should receive a layer diet with around 18 percent crude protein”. So if you’ve got a pile of loofah seeds, they look like a free protein boost.
Then the same page turns around and says “luffa seeds and oil meal contain bitter substances that may be toxic to livestock”. Cattle already got a no. Feedipedia notes that “The use of luffa oil meal was considered inadvisable for cattle”, and PROTA calls the leftover seedcake “bitter and toxic” and “unsuitable as feed for cattle”.
Here’s why anyone asks about chickens at all. In Nigeria, the researchers behind the trial below wrote, loofah “grows luxuriantly uncultivated and the sponge is often used for domestic cleaning while the seeds are discarded”. A protein-rich seed that gets thrown away is exactly what feed researchers go looking for. As of 2014, though, Feedipedia said “There is no information available” on using luffa fruit, seeds or oil meal in poultry feeds. The only chicken trial I found came out the next year.
The One Chicken Trial: Broilers Ate Less and Grew Less
That trial is the closest thing you’ll get to an answer, so let me walk you through it. M. A. Onigemo, K. Agbalaya and L. A. Tijani of Lagos State Polytechnic ran it. They dehulled and milled the seeds and fed them at 0, 5, 10, 15 or 20 percent of the diet, “as partial total replacement for groundnut cake”. Groundnut cake is what’s left of peanuts after the oil is pressed out, a common protein feed there. They started with 150 day-old broiler chicks and fed them for 56 days. (The two chicks in the photo aren’t from the trial. They’re just two chicks.)
The result was one-directional. Loofah seed meal “depressed the feed intake, weight gain, live weight, and protein efficiency ratio of the birds as the dietary inclusion of LGSM increased”. More seed meal, worse birds.
The numbers are stark. Birds on the plain ration ate 125.88 grams a day, and birds on the 20 percent ration ate 62.88 grams, about half. Daily weight gain fell from 51.37 grams to 19.35. That’s a bit over a third of what the control birds put on, by my math.
The organs changed too. Liver weight, as a share of live weight, went from 1.38 percent in the control birds to 4.08 percent in the birds on 15 percent seed meal. The spleen went from 0.18 to 1.50 percent. The authors wrote that the rise in liver and spleen weight, along with higher enzyme levels in the blood, “suggest the presence of anti-nutrient in LGSM”. Their bottom line: “the use of LGSM beyond 5% level of inclusion is not beneficial in the production of broiler”.
Read that last line slowly, because it doesn’t tell you 5 percent is good for chickens. It says going past 5 percent didn’t pay. And these were meat birds on a milled, dehulled ration, not your laying hens picking whole seeds out of the dirt. Nobody has tested that, as far as I can find.
The friendliest result I found for a land animal eating the seeds is in rabbits. Feedipedia reports that “Luffa seeds could be safely introduced up to 10% in complete feeds for growing rabbits as a partial replacement for soybean meal”. The very next sentence: “However, growth rate was reduced by 15%”. So even that one came with slower growth.
My call: there’s nothing in it for a backyard flock. Your layer feed already carries the protein your hens need, and the seed brings bitterness along with its protein. The seeds stay out.
Why the Seeds Are Bitter, and Why Cooking Isn’t My Fix
The bitter stuff has a name. Feedipedia says “Luffa seeds and oil meal are bitter, due to the presence of cucurbitacin B, a steroid that is cytotoxic and poisonous to some animals”. It names a second compound too, colocynthin, “a purgative terpenoid glycoside”. Cucurbitacins are the same family of compounds behind a bitter zucchini or a decorative gourd, and I went through them on my gourds page. If you’ve ever bitten into a bitter zucchini, you’ve met them.
In loofah, the seeds are one place they turn up. A Nordic Council of Ministers review of cucurbitacins says of the ridged gourd that “the seeds contain a bitter principle”. Later work found it “to contain cucurbitacin B in roots and seeds”. PROTA’s entry on the smooth loofah notes that its seeds “are credited with emollient and anthelminthic properties”, so they have a folk name as a dewormer. Right after that comes the emetic and cathartic line.
So what does that do to a bird? The Nordic review’s line on chickens is short: “Chickens fed cucurbitacin-containing plant material had damaged intestine and liver”. That fits the livers in the Nigerian trial: 4.08 percent of body weight in the birds on 15 percent seed meal, against 1.38 in the control birds. That’s my reading, though, since the review covers cucurbitacins in general, not loofah seeds.
The dewormer idea has a darker side, too. Feedipedia passes on a report from farmers in northeast Brazil, where ridged loofah “was linked to abortions in cattle and sheep”. Putting loofah fruit in calves’ drinking water to deworm them “resulted in the death of 20 animals”. That’s a farmers’ report and not a trial, but if you’re looking for a dewormer for hens, this isn’t it.
Now, you might think cooking fixes it. This is where my sources split, so here are both sides. Feedipedia says “Processes such as soaking, heat, or moist heat combined with fermentation alleviate toxicity in cucurbit seeds and meals and enhance their nutritive value”. PROTA says “The roasted seeds are edible and contain an edible oil”, meaning for people. And a 2020 rat study led by the same Onigemo compared raw seed meal with boiled, cooked or toasted meal. Toasted gave the best growth, cooked gave the worst, and the authors concluded that heat treatment “enhanced growth performance and had no adverse effect on the haematology and serum biochemistry of albino rats”.
The poison centers and France’s food safety agency see it differently. The National Capital Poison Center says “Cooking does not destroy cucurbitacin”. France’s ANSES describes these substances as ones “which are not destroyed by cooking”. Tox Info Suisse says “Cucurbitacins are heat resistant, which means that they do not break down or evaporate during cooking”.
My call: “alleviate” isn’t “remove”, and rats aren’t hens. Your kitchen can’t measure cucurbitacin either. Roasting a tray of loofah seeds for the flock is a guess, and if the guess is wrong, your birds pay for it. So the seeds stay out, roasted or not.
The photo shows you why seeds end up on the ground in the first place. They sit in the hollow channels running down the sponge, and Purdue says “The plant’s seeds are within the fibers of the sponge and must be removed by shaking and pulling them out with your fingers”. Clemson’s directions are to “peel the skin off, shake the seeds loose”, and UF says to “Spread the seeds out on a sheet for a couple days to let them dry”. If you grow loofah near the run, do that shaking over a bucket or an old sheet, well away from where the hens scratch. Keep the saved seed in a closed jar on a shelf, not in a paper bag on the coop floor.
Young Green Loofah Is a Squash, if It Isn’t Bitter
The young fruit is a different part of the plant, and it gets a different answer. You can eat it yourself. Clemson says “When harvested young, they are tender enough to be eaten raw or cooked, as you would squash or eggplant”. UF’s Charlotte County office says the young fruit tastes “similar to zucchini or cucumbers”. The photo shows ridged loofah sold as a vegetable at a market in Haikou, China, with a bitter melon lying across the top. PROTA says “Immature fruits of less-bitter cultivars of Luffa acutangula are used as a vegetable”.
If you grow it, timing matters a lot. UF says “If you’re interested in eating them, then harvest the squashes when they are less than six inches long”. PROTA says the fruit “has to be picked before the fibrous vascular bundles harden and before the purging compounds develop”. And Clemson says the fruits grow “at a rate of an inch to an inch-and-a-half per day”, so the window closes fast.
Even a loofah picked young can be bitter, though. Plant researchers in Guangdong study why some loofahs are bitter. One team compared a bitter line of ridged loofah with a mild one and found that “drought stress and abscisic acid (ABA) activated genes of the cucurbitacin biosynthesis pathway”. ABA is a plant hormone. A 2026 study found that “Heat and abscisic acid stress activated the cucurbitacin biosynthetic pathway”. The poison center says the same of squash in general: “When squash and other gourds are under stress due to conditions such as high heat, drought, poor soil, or insect damage, the plant produces high levels of cucurbitacin”.
It happens in real kitchens, too. A 2009 report from Okinawa’s public health lab describes “Two consumer complaint cases of bitter tasted fruit of gourd Luffa cylindrica”. In the first, a loofah cooked with tofu and canned beef stew was “intensely bitter tasted and cucurbitacin B was detected by TLC analysis”. PROTA adds a flat warning: “Fruits of wild forms are bitter and poisonous”.
So you taste it before your flock does. The poison center’s rule for squash works here: “Take a very small taste of raw squash, pumpkin, zucchini, or cucumber to check if it is bitter. If it is bitter, spit it out and throw it away”. Bitter squash can “look and smell normal but taste very bitter”, it says, so you can’t judge by eye. UF Charlotte puts it in six words: “Avoid any fruits that taste bitter”.
My call: a loofah picked under six inches that tastes mild when raw is a squash, and I’d treat it like zucchini. Chop a few small pieces and put them out next to your feeder. No source I found tested young loofah in chickens, so that’s my judgment, not a study. A big one that’s already gone tough and pithy goes in the compost.
How much can you give? Treats are a small slice of a hen’s day. Colorado State Extension says “Treats should make up no more than 10% of their daily diet”. Alabama Extension says a laying hen eats “between 100 and 150 grams of feed per day or roughly 0.25 pounds”. That puts everything you hand her together at 10 to 15 grams a day, by my math. Colorado State also says to give no more than the birds will clean up in 5 to 10 minutes, so scraps don’t draw “nuisance animals”. Anything still lying there after that is what draws them. And Merck’s backyard chapter says “birds should receive most of their diet from a balanced, nutritionally complete ration”.
The Dried Sponge Isn’t Chicken Food
If you leave a loofah on the vine, it turns into the sponges in the photo, hung up for sale in a market in San José, Costa Rica. Purdue explains the change: “once the fruit enlarge, tough fibers are produced throughout the pulp. It is these fibers that form the sponge”. UF Charlotte says the fruit will “become pithy as it matures into a sponge”. By the end, the fruit is a tough mesh of fiber.
The old page said to toss dried sponges in the run for the hens to play with. I wouldn’t. Clemson does mention sponges “used as chew toys for pets such as rabbits and hamsters”, and you can see where the idea came from. But a chicken isn’t a rabbit. Maryland Extension’s sheet on crop problems says “They do not have teeth, so feed is swallowed whole”. The same sheet says “Impaction is often the result of eating large amounts of poorly digestible materials like newspapers, grass, feathers, string, plastic or other indigestible material”. Loofah fiber isn’t on that list, and I won’t pretend it is. It’s just not something I’d hand a bird that swallows what it tears off.
Then there’s what’s been done to the sponge. Clemson cleans them with “10 parts water to 1-part bleach for about an hour”, and Purdue suggests a bleach soak “If a whiter sponge is desired”. A shop sponge is meant to be seed-free: PROTA says commercial grade sponges are preferably “free of seeds and with pale, uniform colour”. One you grew yourself can still have a few rattling around inside.
My call: an old sponge goes in the compost, not the run. UF says sponges “can be simply tossed into your compost pile once you’re done with them”, so that’s an easy place for it.
If Your Hens Got Into Loofah Seeds
Say a sponge got shaken out next to the run, or a split fruit dropped over the fence, and the hens found the seeds. Here’s what I’d do, and what I can’t tell you.
What I can’t tell you is what a hen looks like after eating loofah seeds. None of the sources I read describes it for chickens, and I’m not going to make up a list of symptoms.
What I’d do is pick up every seed and scrap of fruit you can find, then rake the spot over. Make sure your hens have their regular feed and fresh water, and keep an eye on them for the next day or two. Colorado State lists general signs that a bird is sick, among them a “Decrease in food and water consumption” and “Persistent watery diarrhea”. If you see anything like that, call a vet who sees poultry, and tell them what the hens got into and roughly how much.
Colorado State’s advice on vets is worth taking before anything happens: “Flock owners must have an identified veterinarian in their area that can diagnose and treat chickens”. Not every vet sees birds, so find yours now. We aren’t vets.
If you’re sorting out the rest of the squash family, my page on gourds for chickens covers decorative gourds and bitter squash. Bitter melon is another plant whose seeds I keep out. Acorn squash seeds, on the other hand, are fine raw and unsalted. And for anything else you’re holding over the fence, try the Can Chickens Eat It? food checker.
Sources
- Heuzé and colleagues, Feedipedia (2017): Luffa (Luffa aegyptiaca).
- Achigan-Dako and colleagues, PROTA (2011): Luffa cylindrica.
- Soladoye and Adebisi, PROTA (2004): Luffa acutangula.
- Onigemo and colleagues, Nigerian Journal of Animal Production (2015): Response of broiler chickens fed diets containing loofah gourd seed meal.
- Onigemo and colleagues, Nigerian Journal of Animal Production (2020): albino rats fed raw and thermally processed loofah gourd seed meals.
- Gry and colleagues, Nordic Council of Ministers, TemaNord 2006:556: Cucurbitacins in plant food.
- Zhao and colleagues, Frontiers in Plant Science (2022): Metabolome and transcriptome analyses of cucurbitacin biosynthesis in luffa (Luffa acutangula).
- Zhu and colleagues, BMC Plant Biology (2026): Cucurbitacin accumulation and bitterness development in luffa fruits.
- National Capital Poison Center: Toxic Squash Syndrome.
- ANSES: Beware of inedible gourds!
- Tox Info Suisse: The bitter aftertaste of poisonous pumpkins and killer courgettes.
- Oshiro and Sakugawa, Okinawa Prefectural Institute of Health and Environment, report 43 (2009): Food poisoning and consumer complaint cases caused by chemicals and natural toxins in Okinawa, FY2008.
- Amy Dabbs, Clemson Home and Garden Information Center: Growing Luffa.
- UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions: Luffa.
- Ralph Mitchell, UF/IFAS Extension Charlotte County (2026): Luffa, eat the sponge!
- Rosie Lerner, Purdue Consumer Horticulture (2005): Out of Your Gourd!
- Colorado State University Extension: Raising Poultry the Organic Way, Disease Control and Feeding.
- Pacheco and colleagues, Alabama Cooperative Extension, ANR-2913 (2022): Feeding the Laying Hen.
- Yuko Sato, Merck Veterinary Manual (2024): Management of Backyard Poultry.
- Moyle and colleagues, University of Maryland Extension, EBR-60 (2021): Common Crop Issues in Backyard Chickens.
Sources checked October 31, 2026. The calls on keeping the seeds out, roasted or not, on treating young loofah like zucchini and on where an old sponge goes are mine. We aren’t vets. If a bird looks sick, call a vet who sees poultry.
Related read: How to Raise Chickens for Eggs — Instant PDF download. Secure checkout by Stripe