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By free-ranging, presumably they’re eating bugs and worms in addition to vegetable matter. They are omnivores. Formulated chicken feed is always available to them as well. No matter what they’re eating, I have found that grit is an important commodity.

Indeed. And I prefer to give them more natural foods, in which case they need grit as you pointed out. I let them free range a lot. Even though they don’t prefer pellets, they certainly will not starve themselves and eventually they will eat them. It also depends on what they get used to eating...

OK so when do they need grit? And how do you encourage the chickens to eat pellets when they really don’t seem to like them.?

It’s complicated. Yes, they should have high protein food; i.e. 16%+ layer pellets. But my chickens don’t really prefer the pellets, either, especially once they have had some chicken scratch - which is basically crumbled up corn that they love. But that’s not as high in protein so I feed that...