Wow, I just spent 90 minutes reading all of these! I have an interesting way of supplementing my chicken feed, I just dialed in on it yesterday:
I had been wanting to go to grocery stores and get their produce discards, but I hit a brick wall at 3 places. They ALL said, with disdain, NO, you may NOT have our discards, and NO, you may NOT dig through our garbage. It was very disturbing, and even when I tried to negotiate, there was no budging. Some of you are very fortunate to have been able to get your grocer's discards. I must live in retardville. They all acted like I wanted to get away with stealing or something. I live in a very urban area, and most of the grocers are big box. I still have one local market to approach, but it's sort of a drive, which detracts from my goal (to keep costs down).
Ok, so I have been ruminating on *sneaking* into dumpsters. Yes it's questionable ethically, but COME ON....stealing food garbage is not something I will lose sleep over. It will make a world of difference to my chickens. if you want to scold me, please feel free, I've already been scolded by my (adult) children, and my spouse, so it's probably something I've already heard. On a 10 scale, I feel like 2 on the unethical side. The food is important to me. So, still ruminating....I had my eye on a nearby chinese take out restaurant, figuring their garbage would have a lot of greens and veggies in it. But they are open until 11 pm everyday and I just have not been able to drag myself out into the frigid weather at midnight to dive into a dumpster. Then, yesterday, I drove by an elementary school and noticed their dumpster was overflowing with their garbage bags. And that was my AHA moment...their garbage probably has a high proportion of food, and what is not food is going to be mostly paper, easy to figure out which bags are food and which are not. I stopped by yesterday evening and right on top were 2 giant CLEAR garbage bags filled with obvious food discards. I tossed 2 bags into my trunk and took them home and sifted through them. I ended up with about 8 pounds of fresh, YUMMY chicken snacks! Here is why this is a great source of food:
1. Fresh discards will arrive in the dumpster 5 days a week, except for summer, which I don't care about (my hens free range)
2. Discards can be obtained during normal waking hours.
3. Bags are clear, making the food bags easy to identify.
4. The food in these bags are what we are feeding our children, so, it must be reasonably good for the chickens.
yesterday's haul yielded 7 unopened fruit cups; 5 whole bananas; 3 ham and cheese sandwiches; 3 lbs of mac&cheese; 30 chicken nuggets
10 chunks of brocolli florets
5. The discards are between 1 and 7 days fresh.
-1. Dumpster diving is illegal.
-2. The food is gooey/wet/messy, as there are tons of half-drank discarded milk cartons mixed in. If you try this, you will get slimey up to your elbows.
I am not condoning this for *you*. I am just sharing how *I* am finding ways to be resourceful. If I get caught, I will repent and come up with another plan. It depends on whether I get caught by the custodian or a police officer.
I am considering making a deal with the school - I will give presentation(s) to kids about raising urban chickens if they let me dive once a week.
Other things I do (during winter):
* boil rice and oatmeal from time to time, always adding a large dollup of olive oil
* I also succeeded in having live greens in my garden greenhouse until mid-January (planted early September), but then everything died. This winter has been much colder than normal fore much longer than normal.
* I dug up 4 healthy chard plant in December and put them in pots in a sunny bedroom, and they are still thriving. They don't yield much, but every leaf is a treat to the ladies. And these chard plants will yield seeds this summer when I put them back outside (they are biennials) so I am getting a 2fer by bringing them inside over winter.
