What Do Chickens Eat?

What do chickens eat? It’s better to ask what don’t they eat!

Chickens are the ultimate Omnivores, there is very little that they won’t eat and that makes their feed bowls an excellent destination for all manner of kitchen scraps.

But to ensure that your chickens are getting everything that they need, you should feed them with a feed that is specific to their age and purpose.

Chickens will scratch around on the ground for things to eat and they will also snap bugs out of the air at every opportunity.

What Do Chickens Eat – Commercial Feed

If you make sure that your chickens have the correct feed in the right quantities then all will be well.

Your chickens will grow well and be well nourished which helps them to resist parasitic infestations.

Chicks need chick food. It’s best to give them a medicated feed at first, to prevent coccidiosis, which is fatal for chicks.

Once chicks reach between 4 and 8 weeks, they can be switched to an adult feed.

Layers have different feed requirements to meat birds. To get the most eggs from your hens make sure that you feed them with a layer feed.

You can buy feed from feed stores or your local tractor supply store. If you live in an urban area, where you don’t have easy access to those stores you can order feed online, but the shipping costs will be high. You can ask at pet stores to see if they can order food for you.

A clean garbage can with a tight fitting lid is an ideal place to keep sacks of feed. The feed must be kept dry or mould will develop. Mouldy food will kill chickens so keep it dry.

What Do Chickens Eat – Foraging

Chickens were designed to forage for their food, but unless you have a large acreage, there won’t be enough food available for them to be well nourished on forage alone.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t let them forage if you have space available. Chickens love to scratch around for bites to eat.

Chickens will eat weeds, grass, flowers, seeds, beetles, worms, slugs, snails, flies, wasps, ants etc.

If you have plants that you love, make sure your chickens can’t get to them. The hungry hen doesn’t see a prized flower or vegetable garden, all she sees is a tasty snack.

What Do Chickens Eat – Kitchen Scraps

Keep a bucket in the kitchen and toss bread scraps, peelings, and fruit cores into it. Anything that you would normally throw away when you are preparing food can go into the bucket.

Chickens will gobble up left-overs from your meals too. Things like cereal left over from breakfast and rice, pasta, potatoes and cooked vegetables from dinner.

Make sure that you feed them fresh scraps not left-overs that have gone mouldy.

The only things my hens don’t like are potato peels and onions, but if they’ve been cooked up a little they will eat them.

It’s not necessary to give the birds kitchen scraps every day, but it does make a nice treat for them and adding food scraps to their diet, helps to keep the cost of feeding your chickens down.

What Do Chickens Eat – Grit

Chickens don’t actually digest grit, they peck it up and it it goes into their gizzard where it acts to grind up the food that the birds eat.

Put some grit out for your birds 2 or 3 times a month. They don’t need to have it every day.

Birds that are able to free range will find their own grit, but birds that are confined should have grit made available to them.

What Do Chickens Eat – Oyster Shells or Regular Egg Shells

Laying hens need a lot of calcium to produce shells for their eggs.

If your hens sole source of food is a from a layer mix, then they will be getting enough calcium. But if you feed them less than a full layer ration and make up the difference with scraps and forage, then you’ll need to provide additional calcium.

Good sources of calcium are ground oyster shells which you can buy at the feed store or a grit with added calcium.

Another way to provide calcium to your hens is to feed them regular egg shells. You must wash them first, dry them and then crush them before feeding to the shells to your chickens.

What Do Chickens Eat – Quantities

The amount of food that your flock will consume depends on what type of birds you have. Bigger breeds will eat more, smaller breeds will eat less.

An average layer will need to eat 2 pounds of food per week to produce 5 – 6 eggs.

The cost to feed a hen is about 10 cents per day, but if you are giving kitchen scraps and allowing your birds to free range a little then the cost will be lower.

It’s a pretty good deal, when you factor in how much free range eggs at the store cost to buy.

Return from What Do Chickens Eat to Egg Laying Chickens

Leave this page and go to New Self Sufficient Living – Home