Feed Chickens Frugally with Table Scraps and Such List

We have to creative to lower the feed bill while feeding homesteading chickens. Feeding your chicken with a wide variety of food helps them lay good quality eggs.

What chickens can eat is not that limited, there are a lot of things that chickens can eat from our kitchen, garden, and even the ground.

Here are some of those, or, actually, a lot of those things.

First, here is the fundamentals. Chicken feed is the staple in their diets. Supplements can be added within their feed to pick from. Parts of the feed can include oyster shells, poultry grit, shortened bales of straw, and grains.

One of the best things you can feed to chickens is bugs, which chickens can pick up when they free range. This is what chickens like to do and they can cut down on invading insects including fleas and ticks. Other bugs and insects chickens can eat include ants, beetles, caterpillars, crickets, mealworms, moths, and slugs. However, they shouldn’t eat flies; not good for their digestive system.

Next, comes the flowers. A good thing to feed your chickens is weeds from the yard and garden. After all, they are right there next to the coop. It’s a two-for-one deal. The types of weeds they can eat include bee balm, chickweed, clover, dandelion, grass clippings, marigold, plantain, and violet. Besides the outdoors, you can also give them things from the kitchen, such as your garbage. Put any scraps in a container and the chickens can easily eat out of it. While chickens love to eat out unwanted food, don’t give them any food that is moldy or rotten. Many of these foods should be also fed minimally. They include bread, cooked rice and pasta, fish, milk, pork, raisins, and non-fat yogurt. You can feed them, well, cooked poultry, but that is a type of cannibalism that is a little unnerving.

Speaking about serving them other poultry, pork and fish were mentioned there and other animals can be fed to them. Chickens are omnivores, so it’s in their nature to hunt for small animals. However, when it comes to rats, they were be poisoned if they eat rats that have been poisoned themselves, which is why poisons on rodents in highly discouraged. Frogs, lizards, snakes and any feeder fish (gold fish) can be fed to chickens. They can also eat from the garden, such as grown fruits, vegetables, and herbs. This includes apples without the seeds, basil, berries, cabbage, carrots, cilantro, cucumbers, garlic, greens, oregano, peas, pumpkin seeds, squash, sunflower seeds, sweet potato, and tomatoes.

And what is listed here is not everything they can eat. There are many others from the different categories that chickens can devour. Those chicken beaks are strong and can take in all types of food. Mix up the diet a bit and give them these various things within their feed.

Chickens don’t really like the taste of lemons or limes but generally they like oranges and sometimes grapefruit. Beware that some people say that citrus interferes with calcium absorption and cause soft eggshells.

Chickens really should not eat sugary, salty or moldy food because they are bad for the chicken’s digestive systems and can even kill them. This includes all types of candy and chocolate.

Chickens can eat Asparagus but understand that it may alter eggs taste.

Beans can be eaten by chickens if they are cooked but never dry uncooked beans.

Don’t: Tomato leaves/green fruit Contains Solanine (kills red blood cells and causes heart failure)

Don’t: Uncooked Potato – Contains Solanine (kills red blood cells and causes heart failure)

Don’t: Uncooked rice – Potential to swell in the digestive system, causing blockages

Click here to read about how to Feed Chickens Frugally with Table Scraps and Such List:

https://backyardchickenproject.com/what-can-you-feed-chickens-100-things-on-our-list/

As an added bonus, You may want to take a peek at the article “Trapping Invertebrates For Chickens”:

https://avianaquamiser.com/posts/trapping_invertebrates_for_chickens/