kitchen scraps only?

[midwife mama]

Is it possible for chickens to thrive only on kitchen scraps?

Do they require grains for nutritional purposes? Could these needs be met another way?

Any favorite resources for learning more about raising pasture chickens who are fed primarily whole foods and scraps?

Thanks

 

[Tiramisu]

Quote:
No, they need more than just scraps. They could be fed only that, but the nutritional value would not fulfill what they need and affect laying.
There are several threads on here about peoples own recipes and good sites to use. Here is a thread https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=305649

 

[briteday]

When I got chickens I talked to my grandma. She raised hers on kitchen (meat, veggie, grain, fruit) scraps. However, remember food was more nutritious and more likely to be in it's original, non-processed form back then. The hens layed enough eggs to get them by and that's all grandma wanted. Now that commercial producers have figured out the optimal nutrition of egg and meat porduction most commercially prepared chicken food is pretty optimal for home use as well. I think my chickens enjoy the small bucket of kitchen scraps that I bring to them daily, variety can be the spice of any life. But I have a 1-gallon bucket that is rarely FULL on a daily basis, for about 20 birds. They get whatever vegetable / salad leftovers, fruit cores or peelings, meat bits, ... that might otherwise hit the garbage can. Never feed anything moldy or otherwise inedible. So I think scraps can be a fun addition to the diet but you would never get a decent food to egg conversion if that's all you fed your chickens.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

It would depend on how much scraps you had every day and what they were made of.

Family sizes are smaller now (generally speaking) than they used to be so there are fewer people generating scraps. Fewer people growing their own food so there are fewer processing scraps. In short most families don't generate as much kitchen scraps as once they did so less for the birds to live on.

It is entirely possible to feed only kitchen scraps if the birds are also able to free range to forage up the rest of what they need. For as long as the range is good. When it's not you're either going to have to feed more scraps, feed a complete ration chicken feed, or accept that you will get no eggs until the range improves again.

As you're in Montana you've got a pretty big part of the year that the birds are not going to be able to forage much of their needs unless you're keeping other livestock in a barn where they can clean up spilled feed and such. If you're not feeding a large family I would't try to overwinter more than a few birds on just scraps alone. Not only will you not get any eggs, but the birds may not survive the winter.

.....Alan.

 

[Chickenmaven]

I think that Alan is right. Few modern families will generate enough scraps. That said, I did read an article (I believe it was in Backyard Poultry) that described a business that gathered tons of food from cafeterias and composted it. Their birds lived on compost. Only their young chicks got commercial feed. I think this would work if the birds got a balanced diet from the scraps. My feed bill is cut in half in the latter part of the summer, when my chicken run becomes the neighborhood's compost bin!