What do I feed my chickens?

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kazoo1111

kazoo1111

Chirping
7 Years
6 Years
Jan 23, 2013
258
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I've heard of feeding the chickens chicken scratch, chicken feed crushed oyster shells, and a lot more but what should I really be feeding them?
 
What is the nature of your flock? Chicks? Hens? Roosters?

If in doubt, they can all eat non-medicated Starter/Grower or an All Flock or Flock Raiser type feed. Offering shells on the side is a common practice. Don't mix it into the feed.

Scratch is OK, but in very small doses, tossed just a wee bit once in awhile. It is pretty woeful in providing anything near a balanced or complete diet for adult chickens.
 
Grown hens should be fed good quality laying pellets, assorted (greens-kale, spinach, clover), and oyster shell. While allowing your hens to free range will allow them to supplement their diet, sometimes predators make such arrangements impossible. You can vary their diet by occasionally adding cat food-they can eat dry but make sure they have plenty of water. Chickens will eat meat of any kind, and scarf up any table scraps you have. You can mimic the foraging diet by feeding them native grasses-or you can grow your own.
 
I make my own mixture. Whole pellets, crumble, cracked corn, and whole corn is their main diet. I will give crushed oyster shells, left over vegetable ends from salad makings, the dreaded ends of bread loafs, and my girls love left over mashed potatoes. Funny watching them eat mashed potatoes and then they try to shake off their little beaks.

For a small treat, I will throw out bird seed and they scratch for that.

Most of all I let them roam the yard and forage for bugs and worms, when the graden isnt in the beginning stages. They will destroy the small seedlings.

So far I have had great tasting eggs, great tasting birds, and good hatch rates in a homemade incubator, which is fabrictaed from an old fish tank.
 
So is it okay to feed them older food that hasn't grown mold or anything like that but just something we wouldn't want to eat.
 
Stale bread or cereal would be fine or bruised produce. I would be careful about dairy and meat products if there is a chance that they are spoiled. Of course this would be just a treat. The laying pellets are nutritionally balanced.
 
Last edited:
Well, you can get this stuff called "peckish" chicken food. Or you can give them veggie scraps, stale bread or even crickets!! Crickets help them to be active!! Or you can use old corn
 
i mix scratch, cracked corn & layer pellets for their daily meal. They also get any scraps from the kitchen. They loved the left over steak! I just don't give them onions or peppers.
 
vconner said:
i mix scratch, cracked corn & layer pellets for their daily meal.  They also get any scraps from the kitchen.  They loved the left over steak!  I just don't give them onions or peppers.
Click to expand...


If you mix the scratch, layer, and cracked corn is it an even mix? And at what age do we start that? :caf
We are srill researching all of this.
 

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