I think my chickens must all be garbage-guts. It's easier to think of what they DON'T like to eat rather than what they will eat, which is pretty much anything.
I just came back from four days off. Beautiful weather throughout and the main flock was out in the backyard all day everyday. scrounging around for bugs and harvesting the seeding grass heads over in the meadow and eating rose petals and knotweed and kiwi leaves and god only knows what else. The most disgusting food item they consumed was when the chief rooster uncovered a big fat slug and one of his commercial hens dove in and gulped it down. Or she tried to gulp it down. I'm sure it started exuding copious amounts of slime the instant it got into her gullet and it took her a good minute of occasional spastic swallowing to finally slide it all the way down. I know how she felt. I've eaten shark's fin soup and bird's nest soup, both of which tasted like seasoned slime to me (although the former did have a few bits of grainy shark flesh in it).
In between their hunts, they'd troop back up to the chicken house to fill up on their regular lay krums. a big bowlful of which I set out on the terrace next to their runs on such days along with a big bowlful of water so they can stay outside. They also got three dozen cobs of fresh corn spread out over the four days, two watermelons, a cantaloupe, and what I'd consider scraps...several slices of crappy ol' white bread, a bagful of chopped salad greens past their prime but still okay for chickens to eat, and the skin and shreds of meat left over after I dismantled a Cornish-cross bird (not one of mine) I stewed up in a slow cooker. That's honestly all I had for scraps for them this past week. I ate up everything else! Oh, and even after all that, they wanted their scratch grain too every night before they retired, enough for maybe a teaspoon to a tablespoon's worth per bird depending on how fast they ate. Personally, I think scraps are fine for chickens, as long as they're off something as close to nature as possible and you skimp on the stuff that's heavily processed (like the white bread, which is why 22 chickens shared 4 loaf ends and won't get any again for a couple of weeks). They do a pretty good job of balancing their own 'natural' diets too, if you give them half a chance and access to some non-veg protein.
I confess I'm a little baffled when I read about chickens turning their beaks up at...well, almost anything. All the ones I've owned over the years have always seemed so hopelessly greedy, but I wonder if maybe you need to start with chickens bred to be greedy and competitive, like many commercial hens are, to get the rest of the flock whipped up and enthusiastic about trying everything that even remotely looks like food. A fussy rooster who gets all excited and tidbits like some hysterical nitwit who's just pecked his way into Fort Knox probably helps too.
When it comes to scraps, the only thing I DIDN'T offer my chickens this past week were the tops off some green onions I chopped up for some soup. I like onions in my scrambled eggs, but not onion-flavoured eggs, if you catch my drift.
I just came back from four days off. Beautiful weather throughout and the main flock was out in the backyard all day everyday. scrounging around for bugs and harvesting the seeding grass heads over in the meadow and eating rose petals and knotweed and kiwi leaves and god only knows what else. The most disgusting food item they consumed was when the chief rooster uncovered a big fat slug and one of his commercial hens dove in and gulped it down. Or she tried to gulp it down. I'm sure it started exuding copious amounts of slime the instant it got into her gullet and it took her a good minute of occasional spastic swallowing to finally slide it all the way down. I know how she felt. I've eaten shark's fin soup and bird's nest soup, both of which tasted like seasoned slime to me (although the former did have a few bits of grainy shark flesh in it).
In between their hunts, they'd troop back up to the chicken house to fill up on their regular lay krums. a big bowlful of which I set out on the terrace next to their runs on such days along with a big bowlful of water so they can stay outside. They also got three dozen cobs of fresh corn spread out over the four days, two watermelons, a cantaloupe, and what I'd consider scraps...several slices of crappy ol' white bread, a bagful of chopped salad greens past their prime but still okay for chickens to eat, and the skin and shreds of meat left over after I dismantled a Cornish-cross bird (not one of mine) I stewed up in a slow cooker. That's honestly all I had for scraps for them this past week. I ate up everything else! Oh, and even after all that, they wanted their scratch grain too every night before they retired, enough for maybe a teaspoon to a tablespoon's worth per bird depending on how fast they ate. Personally, I think scraps are fine for chickens, as long as they're off something as close to nature as possible and you skimp on the stuff that's heavily processed (like the white bread, which is why 22 chickens shared 4 loaf ends and won't get any again for a couple of weeks). They do a pretty good job of balancing their own 'natural' diets too, if you give them half a chance and access to some non-veg protein.
I confess I'm a little baffled when I read about chickens turning their beaks up at...well, almost anything. All the ones I've owned over the years have always seemed so hopelessly greedy, but I wonder if maybe you need to start with chickens bred to be greedy and competitive, like many commercial hens are, to get the rest of the flock whipped up and enthusiastic about trying everything that even remotely looks like food. A fussy rooster who gets all excited and tidbits like some hysterical nitwit who's just pecked his way into Fort Knox probably helps too.
When it comes to scraps, the only thing I DIDN'T offer my chickens this past week were the tops off some green onions I chopped up for some soup. I like onions in my scrambled eggs, but not onion-flavoured eggs, if you catch my drift.
