What I like to do when being frugal with feed and employing free-range foraging with expectation of significant intact of vegetable matter and insects is to have feed station(s) loaded early in early morning with what they will have completely consumed no earlier than noon and certainly earlier than roosting time. There is a lot of slop in that range. Then I periodically check the degree of crop fill shortly after the birds go to roost which means checking on birds shortly after dark to feel them up in front. Ideally the birds are easy to get to. You want everyone going to bed with a full crop that is laying or growing.I believe we have a wide variety of grasses and weeds to choose from. We live in the middle of the country with native grass with tons of weeds that I dont even know the name of because I havent seen them before in the suburbs where I've lived before. They also are housed on the edge of a pecan and apple tree orchard and we have wooded areas on the perimeter of our land. There is also a patch of grass/hay area that we use to make hay bales for the cows. Dont get me started on the various bugs here... needless to say its ridiculous and having 53 birds seems to not make much of a difference in their population lol;;;
The next thing to watch for is how far the birds range away from the roosting area. Too far and they will sometimes start finding alternative locations to lay eggs or roost, or they will get into areas well beyond where predators have second thoughts about coming after the chickens.
When it comes to insects; then species and size of insects is important. I like to see insects; but many are too small, to evasive or too nasty.
