What is your Chicken's Favourite Food? (List 3 only)

[RonC]

Mines tastes have expanded to include chickweed(have a yard full) and leaves from hackberry trees growing around the yard. They should be called crackberry the way my chicks eat them.

 

[PtitePouleRouge]

Quote: Gold Coaster,
We do have an abundance of predators here. We have wolves, coyotes, bears and goshawks, any one of which could take a chicken, but the only one that has been a problem is raccoons. We are lucky in this I guess because it is legal here to shoot and trap them on one's own land year-round. Also their natural inclination is to tree when chased or threatened (by our very helpful dog) which makes them quite easy to shoot. So that is what we do. I have not had a loss in over a year (fingers crossed, knock on wood...) but when it does happen if I have not been able to kill the raccoon yet I keep the chickens confined all day for a couple weeks in the theory that it will come back for seconds, be disappointed and eventually go elsewhere. The benefits of letting them free-range outweigh the risks because of the large area available to them. We own 6 acres which is not so much, but on all sides we are surrounded by unbroken forest with no near neighbors. With a more difficult suite of predators and a finite amount of available space, as in your situation, the risk/benefit analysis would doubtless look a bit different!

 

[Gold Coaster]

Gold Coaster,
We do have an abundance of predators here. We have wolves, coyotes, bears and goshawks, any one of which could take a chicken, but the only one that has been a problem is raccoons. We are lucky in this I guess because it is legal here to shoot and trap them on one's own land year-round. Also their natural inclination is to tree when chased or threatened (by our very helpful dog) which makes them quite easy to shoot. So that is what we do. I have not had a loss in over a year (fingers crossed, knock on wood...) but when it does happen if I have not been able to kill the raccoon yet I keep the chickens confined all day for a couple weeks in the theory that it will come back for seconds, be disappointed and eventually go elsewhere. The benefits of letting them free-range outweigh the risks because of the large area available to them. We own 6 acres which is not so much, but on all sides we are surrounded by unbroken forest with no near neighbors. With a more difficult suite of predators and a finite amount of available space, as in your situation, the risk/benefit analysis would doubtless look a bit different!

Hello Little Red Hen,

I wish I had 6 acres of forest, but without all those predators! That would be a perfect little chicken paradise.

My biggest concern here is stepping on a snake in the morning when I go to let my chickens out and I think Australia takes the cake when it comes to the biggest range of venomous and non-venomous snakes. Most of them live in the sea mind you, but enough live on dry land to be a concern. That reminds me, not long ago there was an article in the news about a Carpet Python here on the Gold Coast which managed to get into a chicken coop. The owner was using golf-balls to train the chickens to lay eggs in the nesting boxes and the snake thinking they were real eggs, swallowed them. He ended up in surgery in our local wildlife sanctuary and was named Callaway after the brand of golfballs he swallowed. Here is the link if you're interested, complete with the x-ray of Callaway:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-27/python-swallows-golf-balls/3916306

I've heard that raccoons are a big problem as they are very persistant and determined at finding a way into a chicken coop, but bears and wolves sound equally as bad in my books. I'm trying to visualise what I would do if I saw a bear tearing after my flock of chickens. I don't know if I would even be able to aim a weapon straight. What is the one predator which bothers you the most?

It's good to have a sheep-dog, err I mean chicken-dog to look after your flock.

Was s/he raised with your chickens or was s/he just naturally accepting of them? In our neighbourhood we have some domesticated dogs that are let free to wander, and unfortunately they will take the opportunity to maim your chickens if you don't have a fence or if they escape. We once saw a beagle try to tear into a wild cockatoo and without our intervention the poor bird would have been killed.

I hope I don't sound too nosy, but I'm really quite curious to learn how other people raise their chickens especially in other parts of the world!

Cheers,
Gold Coaster

 

[SouthernBYChickens]

My "girls" told me to list it this way:

1) PIZZA (any kind leftover)
2) Bugs
3) Bread

My chickens don't seem to care much for your average earthworm. What the heck?? Every farm picture I remember seeing when I was a kid, showed a chicken pulling a worm out of the ground. I can't force one down their throats!!

 

[BackyardCoop]

For Turkey:
Worms
Grubs
Ants

For my Chickens:
Popcorn (no salt)
Hard Boiled Eggs
Yogurt

 

[BackyardCoop]

My "girls" told me to list it this way:

1) PIZZA (any kind leftover)
2) Bugs
3) Bread

My chickens don't seem to care much for your average earthworm. What the heck?? Every farm picture I remember seeing when I was a kid, showed a chicken pulling a worm out of the ground. I can't force one down their throats!!

 

[yakibert]

For my two Barred Rocks:

1. Grapes ..they go apes over grapes!
2. Corn
3. Broccoli

Same with mine concerning the earth worms ...they look at them a couple times then leave them alone.

 

[bcbug1]

I've just started feeding my 8 week old birds different things. They do like yogurt (I usually mix is with dusty feed) or cooked oatmeal. They love little pieces of bread or tortilla shell - the problem is my 15 yr old black lab is jealous and the chickens are faster then her, so I throw aside a bigger piece of bread for the dog once in awhile, but a chicken runs over and steals it right out from under her snout! And people were worried my dog would be mean to the chickens!

 

[TheChickMan]

1. lettuce any kind
2. torn pieces of bread( wheat they like th emost)
3. clover

 

[lindsay297]

1. Strawberries...( I have seen them beat each other off them)
2. Tomatoes...
3. Lettuce (of any kind...)

I dont know what it is about the red foods but they love them!!