Is it Safe to Feed Uncooked Rice to Chickens?

Is it safe to feed uncooked rice to chickens? This question has been asked time and time again. There are, obviously, 2 schools of thought. One is that rice expands in the chicken’s crop posing a potential danger. One is that it doesn’t.

My experience with rice is cooking it for meals. It does expand quite a bit there but does it expand with just water and no cooking? My original thought was it requires high temperatures to make rice expand. I wanted to find out for myself.

I took 1/3 cup of dry, white rice in the measuring cup and added enough water to fill the cup, which amounted to 7 teaspons. I let it set and took photos.

The first thing I noticed when i added the water was how the rice stuck together. This is the starch on the outside of each grain of rice that is becoming sticky as it gets wet. This is why recipes tell you to rinse your rice if you want soft fluffy rice.

After 3 minutes I was surprised to see that the rice had swelled a touch. After 20 minutes there was quite a difference! I am the first to admit when I have gotten something wrong.

I used to say that rice has to be cooked for it to expand. That is absolutely wrong. Does it expand enough to burst their crop? It doesn’t look like it unless you feed a bird the whole bag. Is it safe to feed dry, uncooked rice to your chickens? Probably, in moderation, but I’ll let you decide with the information this tiny, completely unscientific experiment has produced.