Chicken Entertainment?

[SeramaLife]

Pumpkins! Put one out and cut a hole in the skin so they can get to the flesh, and they will devour it! It takes our 100 about 2 days for a medium size pumpkin. They love it!

 

[fldiver97]

Another suggestion to add......before I let my chickens out in the yard (worried about hawks and owls mostly even when I was workingin the yard and the chicks were near me) I would put a chunk of grass (dug up an area to plant herbs in the garden) with roots and dirt and worms on it inside the run. They had a blast scratching and picking through it and after a while only some dirt and roots were left....They used that for dustbaths. If you have an area where you can dig up some grass/weeds with some soil you may want to let them have that

 

[dtimms]

These are all such awesome ideas! My girls are going to be so happy. I never would have thought of pumpkin for them. And I'm slapping my forehead-- I had one of those giant zucchinis hanging around for so long that it got soft and I tossed it!!!!!! Arghhh!!!!!! Duh.

I think watching them box a corn on the cob would be fun for the whole family, I'm going to stop on my way home at the local farm stand.

As always, thank you, thank you everyone...

 

[PandoraTaylor]

I have ants in the yard, so when I can't freerange the hens, I get a shovel or two of anthill and put it in a old wash tub for them. They eat the ants & then take dirt baths!
I also have a mower with the mulch bag, keep my grass & weeds clipped down, the chickens love to see me mow, will even gather at the fence so they can be first to get the clippings.

this is on top of the Kitchen goodies....including day old homemade bread!

 

[magentamomma]

I put suet in suet feeders, i use the high protein kind just to give them a boost and they have it gone in a day i wonder if there are any non food ideas like how do they like mirrors?

 

[lngrid]

I don't want to be a party pooper and I don't know much about chickens, but people here have warned about feeding alfalfa hay. They say it's too fibrous and can cause crop impaction. They also warn against grass clippings because the clippings are longer than the beak-full a chicken would normally tug off on their own so the clippings can also cause impacted crops. And people are warned not to feed too much corn because it's like junk food for chickens: lots of carbohydrates but not much protein or many vitamins. I've read here not to give more than one inch of cob per bird per day. But what about sprouts? You could sprout wheat or any grain. You'd want to stay away from beans, but you can sprout alfalfa seeds, clover seeds, radish seeds...

What if you skinned a squash and hung it like fruit, just out of their reach so they have to jump a bit for it? You could make it easier for them by skinning a small one with a vegetable peeler if it had a hard skin they might not be able to jump and grab at the same time.

 

[liquidroof]

I think you should also throw some insects there, they can keep them busy all the day.

 

[chris_m90731]

this is a great post. gave me tons of ideas.
here's what i do:
i make sure to feed my girls in a specific bowl.
then, i throw "scratch," around the coop -- it gives them something to do.
something to get them moving around.
and sometimes, my local grocer will give me expired produce and i'll stage whatever i've got in different place inside the coop.
always...ALWAYS...be sure to remove anything that is left.
-it could lead to rats and such.

 

[NCNC_Mel]

I'm pretty new to backyard chickens but here is what we've done a couple of things to keep our tiny flock busy. We covered the bottom of their yard area with leaves and they love scratching through them to get to bugs and any food items I throw down. They had a good time with a couple of smashed pumpkins too. They go crazy over worms and insects - it's a little gross but they adore maggots (we have several animals that eat dead mice so we get the occasional maggot in the trash but I've found several sites that give you advice on raising maggots). Mealworms are very easy to raise and the chickens have fun finding them. I also noticed that they go straight for the cranberries when they are in the scraps we feed (even the first time we gave them cranberries), maybe they like red?