I feed a mix of pellets and grain. The chickens will consistently pick out the grain they like best first. Don't know that there is any way to stop it. What I do to combat that is to be sure that there is enough feeder space for all the chickens to eat at once, especially that there is enough room for the chickens lower on the pecking order. That way you don't have the problem of the dominant chickens being the only ones getting the favorite feed and everybody gets more of a mix. One thing I might suggest is adding things one ingredient at a time to their diet, as the person above said, chickens eat what they know and it takes them awhile to get used to another food, and some things certain chickens never seem to eat. For grains I feed cracked corn, oats, milo, wheat, rolled oats, rolled barley and sunflower seed on a regular basis. When I put the food down the first thing to go is the corn, then the wheat, then the sunflower seed, then the rolled oats, the rolled barley and milo is usually left just sitting there with the pellets until they get hungry again later in the day. I try to feed enough so they pretty much clean up by the end of the day and if there is anything left it is a few pieces of milo and barley. I have fed roasted soy beans and large pigeon peas and lentils, they ate the lentils quite well but they are expensive for the number of birds I have and a nuisance. The soy and peas we can get in bulk roasted and either whole/split or ground. The whole soy beans and peas they did not eat very well at all, they were usually left with the barley... I actually counted the number of peas I put out one time in one pen who always seemed to leave them, and the exact same number were left at the end of the day. Think that was a no vote. I do not have bulk access to some of the smaller peas they have in some parts of the country, those would probably work a lot better. The problem I found with the ground stuff was there is a lot of variation on how ground up and how dusty it was and too small a grind or too dusty and they would not eat it unless I wet it down and fed it as a mash, that is also a nuisance to do on a regular basis. That and convenience is why I still feed about half pellets depending on what protein concentration I am aiming for. The pellets are from a local feed mill and run 20% protein, they are not layer pellets and do not have added calcium so I free feed that.
