What food provides the best protein?

[ChurchRdangi]

Hi,

What is the best thing to feed if you need more protein? I feed mostly corn with some pellets, some bread and egg shells. Some times we have apple peels, grapes or other household "leftovers". The hens get very little "out" time because of our neighbor situation.

Any suggestions?
Thanks,
angie

 

[ams3651]

scrambled or hard boiled eggs are good. I gave my chickens a left over chicken carcass, my oldest son was in awe at how they decimated it! not even a carcass left. Lots of protein in lean meats. HE also throw in tree bark with bugs on them when hes splitting wood. They run for those.

 

[Davaroo]

Quote:
You should consider a formulated ration in this situation, as your main feed. Chicks require about 22% of their diet as protein, adult hens in full lay something like 16-18%; those are the essential requirements. Cracked wheat, which is their preferred grain feed has about 12% protein and corn, which is more commonly fed, about 10%.
Commercial ration is carefully formulated to be complete, and meet these needs, specifically for confined birds. Just reverse it's pre-eminence in your list and place it foremost.
Your feed list should be short, to look like this:

Chicken Feed Short List
Prepared, age appropriate commercial ration
Green feeds as supplement
little else.

Random food selection, 'smorgasboard style', can lcause deficiencies to develop. Some people will say, "Ah, they're just chickens, give 'em what you got...", or
"Ooooh I want the 'babies' to have lots of 'goodies!'...

"

But both approaches can lead to more harm than good.
If you're going to all the trouble to keep them, after all, it's as simple to feed them right as it is to go about it haphazardly.

If you feel you need to meet some special protein needs, you can get as basic or esoteric as you wish. Canned cat food is a recommended source, for example. It's what show breeders use to conditon their birds. Also, any meat or fish leftover from the table will suffice, as will hard boiled eggs, fed back. These are some basic things.
On the other end of the spectrum, some folks go as far as to maintain something like mealworm or cricket farms, so as to provide insectivorous feed to their chickens.

But since you are already feeding pellets, I would urge you to employ the KISS principle, and so eliminate yet another thing to worry about. Use the sort list and deviate from it only very little.