Can Chickens Eat Lovage? A Few Leaves From a Plant You Know

Yes, a few lovage leaves are a fine treat for your hens, as long as they come from a plant you know is lovage. That’s my call, though, not a study’s. I went looking for a chicken study and came up empty, and the Merck Veterinary Manual’s chapter on poisonings in poultry doesn’t name lovage at all. So here’s where I land. Leaves from your own garden, a few at a time, are fine. I’d keep the seed heads and the roots away from your flock. And a “wild lovage” somebody picked by a creek doesn’t go near your hens at all, because both hemlocks can grow there.

I rewrote this page from 20 sources, and they’re all listed at the bottom. What lovage is comes from NC State Extension’s plant page and Plants For A Future, with the USDA’s plant database for where it grows. The ASPCA covers pets. What’s in the plant comes from a study from Portugal on the plant’s edible above-ground parts and a Russian study on the roots. The European Medicines Agency’s file on lovage root adds the medicine side. Merck covers the carrot family and sunlight. The hemlocks come from Penn State and NC State, plus two reports in Avian Diseases. A case report from a poison center in Germany covers a garden mix-up of monkshood with lovage. Feeding a flock comes from Colorado State and Alabama Extension, plus Merck’s backyard poultry page. Where something is my own call or my own math, I’ll tell you.

The old version of this page told a story I can’t back up. It said lovage was “takin’ over everything” in the garden, so a handful went “right in with their scratch”. Then a hen named Daisy, “that sassy ole Rhode Island Red”, took a big bite. “Her eyes bugged out of her head”, it said. She ran laps around the coop, because the leaves were “hotter than a jalapeño!” I can’t show any of that happened. And the sources I read describe lovage as tasting of celery and yeast, not heat. So the story is gone, and so is the promise that “your flock will learn to love the zesty flavor of lovage”. Nobody can promise you that.

A lot of the advice went with it. The old page said lovage “is considered generally safe in moderation” but never said who considers it safe. It said lovage is “packed with good stuff” and listed a string of vitamins and minerals. The one nutrition study I found on lovage’s above-ground parts doesn’t back that list. The old page also said the roots and seeds, along with the leaves and stems, “are all edible for chickens”. NC State says the whole plant is edible for people, which isn’t the same thing. The old page also told you to “collect and dry your own seeds to feed as an occasional treat”. I’d do the opposite, and I’ll explain why below. Worst of all, it said the umbrella-shaped flower clusters make wild lovage “unmistakable once it flowers”. Water hemlock and poison hemlock have umbrella-shaped flower clusters too, and both can kill.

A word on the photos. None of them shows a chicken eating lovage, because I couldn’t find a real photo of that I’d trust. So they show the plant from leaf to seed, plus a water hemlock to compare it with. One shows a hen. Three come from karen_hine on Flickr, who marked them public domain. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Kimberly Emerson at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took one each, both public domain. The hen is by Stefanie Poepken on Unsplash. Every credit links to the photo’s own page.

The short version.

• A few fresh lovage leaves from a plant you know are a fine treat. That’s my call, since I couldn’t find a chicken study.
• Lovage counts as part of your hens’ treats, and treats stay under 10 percent of what they eat in a day.
• Give only what they’ll finish in 5 to 10 minutes.
• Keep the seed heads and the roots out of the run.
• My call: cut lovage back when it flowers, before seeds form. That keeps the leaves coming and leaves no seeds to find.
• If you didn’t plant it, don’t feed it. Water hemlock grows by water, and poison hemlock can grow there or along roadsides and fences. Both have white umbrella flowers.
• Lovage flowers are greenish yellow. A hollow stem with purple spots or stripes is a hemlock warning sign.
• If a hen drools or trembles after time where hemlock grows, call a vet who sees poultry.

A Few Leaves Are a Fine Treat, and That’s My Call

So let’s start with what lovage is to the people who grow it. NC State Extension calls it “a flowering, herbaceous perennial in the carrot family”. It’s a kitchen herb, and NC State says “all of the plant can be consumed” by people. The seeds go into breads and cakes and the leaves into soups and stews. Even the roots get eaten. Plants For A Future says the leaves and stems are eaten raw or cooked, with “a yeasty/celery flavour”.

That’s people, though. For your hens, I couldn’t find anyone who has done the work. I searched PubMed for lovage in chickens, then in poultry, and found nothing. Feedipedia, the big animal feed database, gave me nothing under its common name or its Latin one. Merck’s chapter on poisonings in poultry doesn’t mention it. (Our own Can Chickens Eat It? tool doesn’t rate lovage yet either. It just links back to this page, which is part of why I wrote it out in full.)

The closest thing to a warning that names lovage comes from pet sources. (Merck’s warning for the whole carrot family, which does cover poultry, comes up in the seed section.) The ASPCA lists lovage as toxic to dogs and cats, and to horses too. The clinical signs it gives are short: “Diuretic, increased urination”. In other words, the animal pees more. NC State lists the same two signs for people, and it rates the poison severity as low.

Both pages name the same cause: “Volatile oils, especially phthalide lactones”. Neither one says a word about birds.

My call: a few fresh leaves from a plant you grew, or one you know for sure is lovage, are a fine treat. Here’s my reasoning. People eat the leaves as an herb. The only signs listed for pets are about peeing more. And a few leaves is a small amount for a hen who’s eating her full ration of feed. That’s reasoning, not proof, and I want you to know which is which.

I wouldn’t go past a few leaves, though. No study I found tested any amount in hens.

What Lovage Is and What’s in It

If you’ve never grown it, picture celery that got ambitious. NC State says its “Deeply divided leaves resemble parsley or celery leaves”, and that it “will reach a mature height of 6 feet with a 3 foot spread”. NC State says “Small, greenish yellow flowers bloom in May and June”, though Plants For A Future has it in flower from July to August. They come in umbrella-shaped heads, the kind you see all over the carrot family.

It isn’t native to North America. NC State says it comes from the eastern Mediterranean, and the USDA lists garden lovage as introduced in Canada and in the lower 48 states. Plants For A Future calls it “Naturalizing”. NC State says it “has been known to escape cultivation and spread”, and it’s even “considered invasive in New England”. So yes, you can find real lovage outside a garden. Keep that in mind for later.

Now, what’s in it. Less is known than you’d think. A 2020 study from Portugal (Spréa and colleagues) noted that, apart from what’s known about its volatile compounds, “there is a scarcity of information about this plant species”. So they measured the edible above-ground part of the plant. They found “a low caloric value”. The fatty acids were led by α-linolenic acid, and oxalic acid was the main organic acid. The only vitamin their summary reports is vitamin E, so the study can’t back the vitamin list the old page gave you.

Then there’s the oil. Plants For A Future says an oil from the root is used as a food flavoring. The ASPCA and NC State both name the volatile oils, “especially phthalide lactones”, as the toxic part. The same study from Portugal found the oil from the above-ground parts, not the root, was mostly monoterpenes, with a lot of phthalides too.

Then there are the coumarins, and this is the part that shapes my advice on seeds and roots. A 2022 study from Russia (Olennikov) measured 1.7 to 2.9 milligrams of coumarins per gram of fresh root, across seven kinds of lovage. Older work it cites found several furanocoumarins in the fruits, which gardeners call the seeds. That group includes sun-reactive compounds such as psoralen and bergapten. It also found one in the roots and one in the leaves. Keep those in your head for the seed section below.

How Much Lovage to Give, and How

Treat lovage like any other treat. Colorado State Extension says “Treats should make up no more than 10% of their daily diet”. Lovage goes inside that 10 percent, along with every other scrap and snack you hand out that day.

Here’s what that looks like. Alabama Extension says “A laying hen will consume between 100 and 150 grams of feed per day or roughly 0.25 pounds”. By Alabama’s own math, 10 hens eat about 2.5 pounds a day and go through a 50-pound bag in about 20 days. My rough math for treats: 10 percent of 100 to 150 grams is 10 to 15 grams a day, for everything she gets. That’s why I say a few leaves, not a bunch.

So why so strict? Because the feed is doing the real work. Alabama says a layer diet should have “around 18 percent crude protein”, and that “complete feeds are designed to be the sole source of nutrients for your birds”. Merck’s backyard poultry page agrees: “birds should receive most of their diet from a balanced, nutritionally complete ration”. Fill a hen up on greens and she eats less of the feed that was built for her. (My Rhode Island Red feeding guide walks through the feed side, from chick to hen.)

How I’d serve it:

• Pick a few fresh leaves from your own plant. Chop them or toss them whole, whatever’s easier for you.
• Give only what your hens will finish. Colorado State’s rule is no more than they can eat in 5 to 10 minutes, so you don’t draw pests.
• Pick up whatever’s left after that.
• Don’t hide it in the feeder. The old page told you to mix chopped leaves “into their regular feed”, and I’d rather you see what they eat.
• If your hens ignore it, that’s fine. Don’t push it.

And keep an eye on them the first time. If a bird seems off afterward, take the lovage away and call a vet who sees poultry.

Skip the Seed Heads and the Roots

This is where I part ways with the old page. It said “those seeds are extra nutritious and beneficial for them” and told you to dry them as a winter treat. I couldn’t find a single source for that. Here’s what I did find.

The carrot family has a sunlight problem. The Merck Veterinary Manual says “Plants in the families Apiaceae (also known as Umbelliferae) and Rutaceae contain photoactive furocoumarins (psoralens), which lead to photosensitization in production animals and poultry”. Put simply, those compounds get into the skin and then react with sunlight, and the skin gets damaged. Merck’s poultry example is the seeds of two other plants in the family, bishop’s-weed (Ammi majus) and its cousin Ammi visnaga. Eating them “can produce severe photosensitization in poultry”. Merck adds that signs can show anywhere from several hours to 10 days after exposure, in the animals it describes. Those seeds aren’t lovage. But they’re seeds from the same family.

And lovage’s seeds and roots carry the same kind of compounds. Researchers have found psoralen and two of its relatives in lovage seeds, and bergapten in the roots. In a brine-shrimp test, a Finnish team ranked psoralen and bergapten as the two most sun-reactive of the compounds it named. Apterin, the one older work reported in the leaves, isn’t named in that summary. And the Russian paper says what’s known about lovage’s coumarins “cannot be considered complete”. The Finnish team also tested extracts of lovage leaves for a sunlight reaction, as one of six carrot-family plants “known to contain furanocoumarins”. Dill and parsley were on that list too. Their summary says the results matched how much furanocoumarin each plant holds, but it doesn’t give lovage’s own result.

So why do I still say yes to leaves? This is my call, not a test result. Those compounds turn up all over the carrot family. Parsley and dill have them too, and a few leaves is a small amount. The seeds are the part Merck’s poultry example is about. And the roots are where the Russian study measured its coumarins, up to 2.9 milligrams per gram of fresh root. One of the four it measured, xanthotoxin, is among the sun-reactive kind the Finnish team tested.

The roots also have a medicine side. The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee lists lovage root as a “Traditional herbal medicinal product used to increase the amount of urine to achieve flushing of the urinary tract”. In plain words, it’s a traditional herbal tea people drink to pee more, as an add-on for minor urinary complaints. The committee doesn’t recommend it for anyone under 18, since a child’s urinary trouble needs a doctor’s advice. Nor in pregnancy, for lack of data. For adults, its report weighs the benefit against the risk and calls the balance positive. My call: a plant part that’s used as a human medicine still isn’t something I’d hand to your hen.

The EMA’s report also notes a skin problem in people. In their words, “The extensive handling of lovage during harvest under prolonged exposure to strong sunlight induced dermatitis within a few hours with itching and erythema”. Blisters followed after 36 hours, and the skin had darkened 3 weeks later. To be fair, the same report says the sunlight worry isn’t backed by clinical data for people drinking lovage root tea the way its monograph recommends. It still says “some caution is needed” with sun exposure. For hens, I found no study that looked. If you’re cutting a lot of it on a sunny day, I’d wear gloves and long sleeves (my call, not the EMA’s).

My call: keep the seeds and the roots out of the run. Merck doesn’t describe what this would look like in a hen, so I won’t guess at symptoms for you.

The easy fix is to cut the plant back. Plants For A Future says “it is best to cut the plants down to the ground when flowering in the summer” if you want leaves all summer long. NC State says to “harvest seeds from the plant at regular intervals” to keep it from spreading. My call: cut it down when it flowers, before any seeds form. You get fresh leaves and no seeds. That leaves nothing for your hens to find, and nothing to sow itself around your yard.

Wild Lovage by the Creek Could Be Hemlock

This is the part I’d want you to read twice. The old page said wild lovage grows “all throughout North America” in damp spots by streams, and that its flowers make it “unmistakable once it flowers”. Neither line holds up. On this side of the ocean, NC State lists lovage in Canada and the northern United States, not all of North America. The USDA lists it as introduced, meaning it was brought here and isn’t native. It does escape gardens, as NC State says. And Plants For A Future lists its home habitat as “Mountain pastures and hedgerows near streams”. So a real lovage plant by a creek is possible.

But that’s exactly where the deadly look-alikes grow. NC State lists water hemlock in wet meadows and swamps, and along the banks of ponds and streams. Penn State says poison hemlock “sometimes grows along the banks of water bodies and in meadows”, and it flowers from June into August. Both have white flowers in umbrella-shaped clusters. The photo above is water hemlock, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service labeled it.

These aren’t mild plants. Penn State says “All parts of poison hemlock are toxic to humans and other animals”. NC State says every part of water hemlock is poisonous, with the roots the worst. Frank and Reed described a flock of range turkeys back in 1987, with drooling and tremors. Some were paralyzed, and more birds were dying than usual. When five of the 20-week-old toms were examined, poison hemlock seeds turned up in their crops. In a 1990 follow-up, the same pair gave coniine, a poison from poison hemlock, to young chickens. At 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, 9 of 10 chickens got sick and 2 died. At 100, all 10 died. My yarrow page covers poison hemlock in more detail, since yarrow has the same look-alike problem.

Here’s how the sources tell them apart. The comparison is mine, so treat it as a first look, not a test:

• Flower color. Lovage’s are “Small, greenish yellow”, per NC State. Both hemlocks have white flowers.
• Stems. Penn State says poison hemlock’s stem “develops purple spots, which are very distinctive”. NC State says water hemlock has “purple-striped or mottled, hollow stems”.
• Smell. NC State says poison hemlock has “a foul odor when crushed”. Lovage leaves are eaten for their celery flavor.
• Height won’t help you. NC State says poison hemlock grows “6 to 10 feet tall”, and lovage reaches 6.

My rule is simpler than any of that. If you didn’t plant it, don’t feed it. A mix-up can even happen in a garden. A poison center in Freiburg, Germany, wrote up an older couple who ate “herbs from their garden that contained leaves of monkshood”. The report’s title calls it a confusion of aconite leaves with lovage. And the report says “The monkshood plants grew close to the herbs in their garden”. They were 69 and 71. Both of them ended up in intensive care, and both went home, after 1 and 2 days. So know your plant, and pick from the one you planted.

If one of your hens starts drooling or trembling after time out where hemlock grows, don’t wait. That’s what the poisoned turkeys looked like. Call a vet who sees poultry.

Your Hens in a Lovage Patch

The old page said letting your flock into a lovage patch was “a win-win for them and your plants”. Some of that had no source behind it, so let’s sort it out.

It said hens would spread lovage around your yard because the seeds “will pass right through the chickens’ digestive systems undamaged”. I found no source for that. And it wouldn’t be a plus anyway, since NC State already warns that lovage can spread on its own. It also said their scratching “aerates the soil”. No source for that either.

Here’s what I’d do instead. My call: keep your hens out of the lovage while it’s flowering or setting seed, since ripe seeds can drop right where they scratch. Once you’ve cut it back, a pass through the patch is fine. Whatever leaves they nibble count toward their treats for the day.

My call: free-ranging doesn’t change the math. Merck says outdoor birds “supplement their diet by foraging and eating insects”, but most of their diet should still come from that complete ration.

One more thing about the flowers. Plants For A Future says “The flowers are very attractive to bees”. If you want to leave a few flower heads for the bees, I would. Just fence your hens out of that corner until you cut them, before the seeds form.

If you grow other plants for your flock, my page on purslane has a look-alike problem of its own, and my comfrey page explains why that one stays in my compost. For anything else you’re not sure about, try our Can Chickens Eat It? tool.

Sources

• NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: Levisticum officinale (lovage).
• Plants For A Future: Levisticum officinale.
• USDA NRCS PLANTS Database: Levisticum officinale, garden lovage.
• ASPCA Animal Poison Control: Lovage.
• Spréa and colleagues, Food & Function (2020): Chemical and bioactive characterization of the aromatic plant Levisticum officinale.
• Olennikov, Metabolites (2022): Coumarins of Lovage Roots.
• Ojala and colleagues, Planta Medica (1999): A bioassay using Artemia salina for detecting phototoxicity of plant coumarins.
• European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products (2012): Community herbal monograph on Levisticum officinale Koch, radix.
• European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products (2012): Assessment report on Levisticum officinale Koch, radix.
• Lauren Bookbinder, Merck Veterinary Manual (2024): Overview of Photosensitization in Animals.
• Carmen Jerry, Merck Veterinary Manual (2024): Poisonings in Poultry.
• Tim Abbey, Penn State Extension (2025): Poison Hemlock.
• NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: Conium maculatum (poison hemlock).
• NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: Cicuta maculata (water hemlock).
• Frank and Reed, Avian Diseases (1987): Conium maculatum (poison hemlock) toxicosis in a flock of range turkeys.
• Frank and Reed, Avian Diseases (1990): Comparative toxicity of coniine, an alkaloid of Conium maculatum (poison hemlock).
• Michel and colleagues, Der Anaesthesist (2021): Aconitine poisoning due to confusion of aconite leaves with lovage (in German).
• 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.

Sources checked October 31, 2026. The calls on this page are mine, and I’ve marked each one. 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