. . . can i undernourish my chickens by getting them full feeding them fruits and vegetables and not leaving them with an appatite for the feed?
The short answer is, yes you can.
A 10 week old RI Red is probably eating about 60 grams of feed each day. Let's just consider one important nutrient - protein. Your pullet needs protein to grow. Perhaps her commercial feed is 15% protein. She has been getting 9 grams of protein every day.
Let's say you have kitchen scraps and they are really
wonderful stuff and the pullet really, really wants to eat them
. How 'bout strawberries and lettuce leaves and, by weight, it's about one-half of each that she is eating.
30 grams Strawberries = .2 grams of protein
30 grams Lettuce = .4 grams of protein
Even if your pullet
stuffs herself and consumes nearly twice as much as she would normally eat - she would only have, maybe, 1 gram of protein for the day. She needs 9 grams or close to it.
If you are feeding scraps from the kitchen, it would be best if you include high-protein foods like meat along with the fruits and vegetables. Either that, or consider the scraps as treats and feed just a little.
Steve
edited to say that 15% is a reasonable protein level, whereas I started off with 20% . . . starter feed.
