Organic or vegetarian feed?

[Frazierdogg]

I’m new to getting chickens, and I want to make sure I can eat the eggs. Right now I buy either organic eggs or vegetarian feed eggs, anything less upsets my stomach. I’m trying to research what I should feed my chick before I get them.

Thanks ahead of time for the advise.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Chickens are naturally omnivores. So "vegetarian feed" is mostly there to make consumers feel better and not for the benefit of the chickens (apparently the thought of chickens eating bugs is terrible).

That said if you have some sort of food allergy you can change your chickens' diet (and their eggs) to help with your allergy. Do you know what you might be reacting to?

If just having organic eggs seems to do it for you, you obviously don't need to go as far as meeting organic standards in your backyard, but following general organic practices should be enough, mainly keeping the chickens on organic feed and treats and keeping the chickens' area/your yard free of non-organic pesticides, fertilizers, chemicals.

 

[Alaskan]

Snce it sounds like your issue is a food sensitivity issue... you might not really know what you need to feed them until after you start to eat the eggs and experiment.

Remember that mass produced factory chickens are fed all sorts of scary stuff. So you might not need to feed your chickens organic or vegetarian in order to produce eggs that agree with you.

The easiest thing would be to find a local person with backyard chickens, and ask if you could know what they feed... and if you could try a few of their eggs.

Because..... it could be anything that you are reacting to.... maybe the less expensive chicken eggs from the store are from chickens fed left over dairy products and you are reacting to that.

 

[GC-Raptor]

I’m new to getting chickens, and I want to make sure I can eat the eggs. Right now I buy either organic eggs or vegetarian feed eggs, anything less upsets my stomach. I’m trying to research what I should feed my chick before I get them.

Thanks ahead of time for the advise.

Most feed for chickens is vegetarian, even non organic. They will say on the bag. . . The thing is backyard chickens will eat bugs, worms, salamanders, frogs, mice, small snakes. Basically anything they can catch. GC