Comfrey, a great plant for chickens

Do you know the extraordinary virtues of comfrey for our chickens?

In Europe, at the time of the nannies, one called this plant the grass with the gerçures, or with sewing, or with the carpenters, grass of the cardinal, grass with the pigs. This plant not only healed fractures and open wounds, but also fed cattle. The use of this plant goes back to the dawn of time.

Comfrey, of the Boraginaceae family, of the genus Symphytum includes at least 18 botanical species. In Latin, Consolida, it is said to be a plant that repairs broken bones. Throughout the world, this plant has had many names, but its virtues are recognized everywhere.

It is a hardy perennial that withstands the cold and takes deep roots. The leaves are covered with fine and rough hairs. The base of the hairs is rich in calcium. In order to ensure its fertilization, it forms flowers that change color according to the sexual maturation of the flower.

Since 1813, botanists and researchers have been studying comfrey. During the years it was Lawrence Hills who followed the trail of Henri Doubleday and Crawley’s discoveries. Hills devoted part of his life to comfrey and created many cultivars of the same name from the village of Bocking where he did his work with his wife. During the 1970’s, rumours from Australia cast a shadow over this plant, as it was also found to contain alkaloids (alkaloids if ingested in very large quantities and for a long time could affect the liver). Cattle have eaten large quantities of it because it is rich in B12 and protein. This plant has been eaten and used for centuries without anyone ever getting sick from it. But medical chemists warned against the overuse of certain varieties of comfrey, and newspapers and rumours got the better of comfrey’s reputation, and everyone began to believe that comfrey kills!

Although it contains alkaloids, they are present in 5% of all plants including tomatoes and on the green parts of the potato (solanine). There has never been any evidence of comfrey poisoning. There has never been any evidence of comfrey poisoning. Where did this false rumour come from? It appears that Australian researchers were working on cases of food poisoning in Afghanistan. The grains used to make flour were polluted with Heliotrope seeds which contain high doses of Alkaloid.

Researchers concluded that all plants of the Boraginaceae family were toxic spread information that journalists seized upon and made perverse by creating a shock wave. In spite of the flagrant slippage of this information, all the international press published without bothering to verify the validity of this assertion. In truth, one would probably have to eat a huge concentration of it over a very long period of time, but studies on rats subjected to an intensive comfrey cure have never been conclusive! More than 20 years after the scandal, we see that the economy rules the world. Numerous testimonies of people like this lady having eaten during 15 years 85 g of comfrey every day without any problem. Many farmers have raised cows, goats, horses, pigs and poultry for years without any problems.