Percentage of Greenery for Pellet-Fed Chickens?

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I thoroughly agree with Bee. Given a choice, chickens will gladly range all day, and they will lay better. I notice that when I let my girls out in the morning (not in the winter, when everything is frozen solid and covered with snow and ice) they immediately start grazing on the grass. Only after they've spent some time grazing, do they move into the woods to scratch for insects through the leaf litter. It's amazing to stand and watch them industriously working through my yard. Even in the late fall, after several hard frosts, when there are no insects that I can see, they'll spend the day foraging, and their crops will be rounded right up by the time they return to the coop. They have feed available in their run, but prefer range feeding when given a chance.
 
song of joy said:
Thanks for sharing this! A poultry expert from the extension office told me chickens "get no nutritional value from grass", and that they eat more pellets and produce less eggs when allowed to free-range, as free-ranging costs more energy. His statements contradict my observations. During the growing season, my flock spends lots of time eating grasses, forbs, clover, bugs, etc., AND they eat 30-40% less commercial feed, AND they produce a good number of eggs per hen.
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Commercial grower expert, having no experience whatsoever with chickens on good forage, will always give that same rhetoric that they've been taught by the agribiz articles written by men in the pay of feed companies and big poultry conglomerates. They have no personal experience on the matter, nor have any studies been done on the matter as they have no cause to study feed efficiency on free food and much, much incentive to study feed efficiency on manufactured feeds and CAFO style agriculture.

Always follow the money if you want to see where they are coming from on their viewpoint. A chicken usually can't have more than one egg a day, so if they produce an egg a day on foraged feeds, I'd say they are laying at capacity.
 
I would take into consideration the quality if the greens. My free-range birds when in peak nutrition certainly consume more than 15% of their intake as greens where even dry matter likely exceeds 15%. That being said the birds are particular when they have a choice about what greens are being consumed and the also consume animal forages that are better than the complete feeds I provide.
 

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