Can Chickens live on table scraps only?

[Folly's place]

Table scraps? How much good food do you waste out there? Chicken feed, per pound dry weight, is about $0.35 per pound. Table food, not counting it's dry weight, is way more expensive! And it's dry weight, hugely different.
Mary

 

[Folly's place]

If you live in a very warm climate, have diverse plantings, woods, livestock feed spilled everywhere, and old style game type chickens, it's doable, with careful management. Don't expect rapid growth or many eggs though. Think small birds with low egg production, and many losses to predators.
Mary

 

[Kayla's Lunch]

I have only had chickens for a little over a year. I feed my little flock of 11 hens and 3 pullets barley fodder and they love to free range and eat much less feed when the season has a lot to offer them. I only live on 1/3 of an acre and it is overgrown and weedy with lots of interesting things here and there. But even in the best of times, they eat feed. I think the least amount of feed they eat is 1.5 cups a day, fermented. That isn't much, but what would they do without it? I don't think scraps alone could give them the right nutrition.

 

[Compost King]

As far as breeds that would be better at surviving without milled feed I would go with older breeds, breeds closer to their wild roots and bantams. I personally like the idea of bantams for this not that I plan on every having chickens that must forage to survive but its good to be prepared for the worst and something bad may happen that cuts of food supply, Weather events, Wars, Economic disasters etc... if something like that happens I plan to eat my large fowl first then survive on the eggs of Foraging bantams. Although right now my bantam collection is a bit thin. I have a Rhode Island Red bantam Rooster that I am going to mate with Large Fowl Leghorns for my emergency foraging birds that hopefully never get put into survival use. If I had Bantam Leghorns I would use them but I haven't had the chance to buy any. There are probably better breeds than those to use but I am not going to comment on breeds I have never had and as far as the older breeds I do have Dorkings and I would not use them for something like that. Although they do a great job of cleaning up spilt feed first then they eat from the feeder which offsets their big appetites. I have yet to see them really forage well though.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Table scraps? How much good food do you waste out there? Chicken feed, per pound dry weight, is about $0.35 per pound. Table food, not counting it's dry weight, is way more expensive! And it's dry weight, hugely different.
Mary

I don't think anyone is suggesting buying "people" food to feed the chickens, but food waste is a big problem in this country...so if some of it can be fed to animals instead of landfills, it's worth thinking about!

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

What about supplements? Wonder if there's a chicken multi-vitamin out there that'd give the right mix of nutrients. You know, like a mix of 11 secret herbs and spices....wait, that's not right.

 

[Folly's place]

Of course it's reasonable to feed some scraps to the chickens, but the OP wanted the birds to subsist on scraps only. That's what I was commenting on here.
Mary

 

[Compost King]

The best feed Supplement.... Chicken Feed. The Supplements would likely just end up costing money so why not just buy chicken feed?

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Depends what you mean by "scraps," both quantity and quality. A bowlful of stuff like potato peels, cucumber parings, moldy tomatoes, a watermelon rind, some lettuce leaves turning brown, yesterday's oatmeal, stale bread, a wilted salad, leftover mashed potatoes, the green beans the kids wouldn't eat, crusty week-old birthday cake... no. You'll have some desperately hungry, sorry-looking birds, but as others have said, they won't keep you in eggs or add much more than flavor to a soup because they won't be healthy. If you can't afford to feed them the optimum nutrition they need and deserve, it would be the kind, humane, mature and responsible thing to re-home them to someone who can and will.

 

[Compost King]

I tend to put most of the scraps that are not suitable for chickens in my worm bins, when its completely worm castings (and worms) I dump it in one of the Chicken runs for them to scratch through. Its not just full of worms but other insects and all those nasty things that chickens shouldn't eat is compost with beneficial bacteria that helps to break down the bedding materials in the chicken run. Coffee Grounds are bad for chickens but things that feed off of Coffee grounds are very healthy for chickens. Moldy food are bad for chickens, things that eat moldy foods are good for chickens...