Alternative Feeds for Chickens

Trying to make the food budget balance with rising food prices has become a bit of a challenge these days. It’s caused me to analyze and re-evaluate our diet (which isn’t a bad thing), because now, I have to ask myself what my price limits are for the things I usually buy.

I’m very thankful to have a garden, fruit trees, and smallholding livestock. But there’s a concern too, because some of the heftiest price jumps have been for livestock feed. So I’m analyzing their diets too, and asking, what are the alternatives for feeding our animals?

Well, how much food does a chicken need? There are various answers to that question because it depends on the age and type of chicken. Production estimates are usually around 4 to 6 ounces per chicken per day if the chickens are getting all their nutritional needs met by commercial feed. But what about chickens that free range and supplement their own diet? How does that factor in? I don’t know a formula to calculate that, but I can tell you that because of our alternative feeding methods, our chickens eat very little pelleted food. In fact, they much prefer the other things we offer them.

So here’s what we do to help cut the feed bill. As a heads up, you won’t find that it conforms to what a lot of the experts say. But we have healthy, happy chickens and feed them for practically free. So these things definitely work. The links will take you to my blog posts for more information.

Grazing beds. We grow fresh grass in these beds, which the chickens trim enthusiastically.

Any grass seed will do; chickens just love fresh greens. Occasionally, we move the bed to a new location, and let the chickens scratch up whatever they can find in the dirt.

Gathered greens and herbs. Sometimes I take my hand sickle and trim tall grass for them. Also, I gather weeds and herbs: chickweed (a favorite), clover, parsley, dandelion, plantain, purslane, bee balm, wood sorrel, basil, borage, marjoram, chervil, chives, cilantro, mint, echinacea, dill, comfrey, lemon balm, marigold flowers, hyssop, lemongrass, oregano, stinging nettles, nasturtium, purple deadnettle, rose, smartweed, sage, yarrow, tarragon, thyme, raspberry leaves, thyme.

Root crops. Hang a turnip, carrot, beet, sweet potato, etc. where the chickens can peck it, and it will amuse them for quite awhile.

Winter squash. These are easy to feed. I cut them in sections and let the chickens peck out the seeds and flesh.

Surplus melons and overgrown cucumbers. These can be fed the same way.

Compost. Moving our compost bins into the chicken yard was one of the best things we ever did. 

It’s less work for us and they love scratching through it. What’s especially amazing, is that there appears to be some sort of symbiotic relationship between chickens and compost. With only minimal turning on our part, our compost works up much more quickly than chickenless compost piles. It’s almost like magic. (In fact, my How To Compost With Chickens is one of my most popular eBooks. See cover below, or follow that link for details.)

Do we do anything special about what goes into the chicken compost pile? No. They eat what they want and ignore what they don’t want. So all kitchen and canning scraps go into the compost, including dried, crushed eggshells, moldy cheese, and meat scraps. Shockingly, we don’t separate out coffee grounds and onion skins (big no-nos in the chicken expert world) because the chickens don’t consider them food and leave them to decompose on their own.

Eggshells, dried and crushed instead of oyster shells for calcium. As mentioned above, these are fed via the compost. I know some people worry this will cause chickens to become egg eaters, but I’ve never had a chicken yet who was smart enough to look at a jigsaw puzzle of crushed egg shells and mentally figure out the pieces could be reconstructed into eggs.

Cooked eggs (scrambled or hard boiled). Extra eggs can be fed back to omnivorous livestock! We especially seem to end up with an excess of duck eggs, which I hardboil, then chop shell and all into small pieces for the chickens.

Surplus dairy. Apparently, chickens can’t digest milk, but they can eat cheese, yogurt, kefir, curds, and whey. Since we have goats, we often have surplus milk, so this is an excellent way for it to not go to waste.

Homegrown grains and sunflower seeds. The thing about grain for chickens, is that it doesn’t have to be processed. Wheat for example. Toss some wheat heads into the chicken yard, and they know exactly what to do with it. Growing grain for chickens is much less labor intensive than growing it for humans. Ditto for sunflower seeds, set a head out and they’ll take care of the processing. 

Besides grass grains (wheat, oats, barley), small grains such as amaranth or sorghum are easy to grow and easy to feed. I toss whole seed heads into the chicken yard and they do the rest. Corn usually needs to be cracked to make it eating size for chickens.

Sprouted grains and fodder. Both of these can stretch the feed budget a lot. Also, they’re very healthy. We feed sprouted grains when the root tails are about half-an-inch.

We feed fodder when the grass has grown about three inches tall. They eat grass, grain, and roots.

I’m not sure how much it decreases the feed bill, but it definitely boosts nutrition. And the chickens love it.

Grubs. Any time I dig anywhere, I keep a small bucket handy to toss grubs into. The chickens adore these, and I hope it helps keep our insect population down as well.

Earthworms. The chickens find these in the compost, but for anyone practicing vermiculture for castings, this is a great way to manage the earthworm population.

Other insects and insect larvae. Some people raise mealworms or solder fly larvae for chicken feed. I’ve never tried either. If we ever find a cache of larvae, we scoop it into a bucket and take it to them. They also love crickets, but these aren’t easy to catch and transport! 

How do I know they’re getting a proper diet? How do I know it’s properly balanced? Well, they get protein, carbohydrates, fats, fresh fruits and vegetables, and all from zero to minimally processed sources. They are bright eyed, interested in life, have good weight, shiny feathers and firm egg shells. We still keep free choice commercial feed available, but every single chicken (and the Muscovies) prefer the goodies I’ve listed above. 

If you’re interested in learning how to mix your own feed rations, I have another little eBook that will teach you how to do that, How To Mix Feed Rations With the Pearson Square. It includes a lot of information on self-sufficient livestock feeding for a variety of species.

Prepper’s Livestock Handbook is another of my books that emphasizes alternative feeds for self-sufficiency. The link is to its webpage, where you can find more information.

Alternative Feeds for Chickens © April 2022 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com