What is your chickens’ favorite scrap treat?

[GregnLety]

Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

Thanks, I keep those for the cardinals but will start sharing with the chickens.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm not a big fan of treats, though the kitchen scraps go to my birds daily (just the wife and I, we don't make many scraps, certainly not when you consider the size of the flock).

But in season, they do show a strong preference for grapes (we have wild muscadine), watermelons, cucumbers (I keep forgetting to use them), and any growing squash - pumpkin, summer squash, zucchini - all of which I use as ground cover. Oh, and blackberries, which also grow wild in the pasture (they fight the goats for those).

Late in season, they like sorghum sprays and red sorrel.

 

[Gizabelle]

Carseat crumbs, lol.
Anything animal friendly leftover from the kitchen gets divided between 6 chickens, 2 goats and a pig.
I'd say watermelon rinds in the summer are one of the most popular, but we go through lots of fruit year round and the girls always get dibs on parings and too squishy berries.

 

[theoldchick]

Anything that doesn't outrun them.

 

[GregnLety]

Watermelon and tomatoes from the kitchen. Figs, pears and apples from our trees...

 

[Iluveggers]

From your list,, I only have available grapes,, (that are spent), and Watermelon remains, after a party. I actually do have a meat grinder that I set up in my run during summer. Into it I grind all the watermelon rinds. The small tidbits get munched up immediately. Larger un-ground/un-chopped watermelon rinds sometimes get left behind too long,, And result in being thrown away when rotting starts.
Cucumbers,,, yes they get the skins. We munch the interior portions for dinner

Doesn’t have to be from my list! I was trying to get ideas of other things chickens love, so please add any other food they love! Once my garden is up & running again they’ll have much more variety.

 

[cavemanrich]

I know it's not scraps but one of my silkies loves the finch bird seed from tractor supply. I mix it in with 5 grain scratch and watch her pick out those little seeds.

Besides scratch,, I also give my hens Wild bird seeds,, as well as BOSS

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

BOSS, pomegranate, apples and berries I freeze in water in the summer in a bowl then plop the ice block out for them to cool off. I'll have to try watermelon. I used to feed my chickens any old scraps but now I'm paranoid they will get crop issues so they mainly get treats as opposed to scraps. They're spoiled but so is my dog who gets a couple egg yolks a week

 

[Rangergord]

Well table scraps are scarce most of the time here, yesterday they got broccoli and cauliflower trimmings. Today I gave them a handful of BOSS, a few scratch grains and several of these. Extruded potato starch puffs, I tried them myself and they were a bit bland. I thought I might be able to eat them if I fried them up with a pinch of salt. Then they would be a bit like Cheetos. But the texture is interesting and then it hit me. This is like eating styrofoam only better! Chickens love eating foam! So I fed them several as part of their mid day snack. They did not go after them first thing but after they ate the scratch and sunflower seeds they must have eaten them because they were not there when I came back. The starch puffs don’t weigh much but obviously you should not feed chickens a lot of extra starch that dilutes their protein intake.

 

[rayrose]

I never feed mine table scraps. But their favorite
all time treat are roaches (alive or dead) . They literally fight over them.