Feeding Chickens
If you’re like me, your chickens are part of the family, so it’s important to feed them food that is nutritious and will keep them healthy. I also want my eggs to taste good, to have high nutrition, and have a nice bright color, so what I feed my chickens is important. You know the saying “garbage in, garbage out”…well the same applies to chickens and the “out” is the egg. Well, the saying basically applies to everything in life but that’s for another day.
Our chickens eating scratch and worms in the run.
I try to drop the treats in piles all over the run so the chickens fan out. This allows them to each have a pile of treats without having to worry about pecking order.
WATER
Just like you and I, water is a very important part of chickens daily needs. Your chickens actually drink about 2 cups of water each per day so make sure you’re picking a waterer that is an appropriate size for your flock . We use 2 gallon buckets all year round for our fully grown hens, switching to a heated bucket for the winter. We have 2 buckets and 14 chickens, so we usually do a top up once or twice a week. The buckets do create more waste water as they can never drink to the bottom, but we use the “waste” water in the garden or dump it into our pond.
For the chicks we use a shallow drinker so they cannot drown, this is very important. Do not switch to a 2 gallon bucket until chicks are fully grown. Rule of thumb, when you switch their feed you can switch their waterer.
Wash out your buckets at least once a week. Using a scrubber and dawn dish soap, clean your buckets making sure to rinse thoroughly. Once your bucket has fully dried, refill with fresh water.
Heated Water Bucket
FEEDING CHICKS
First step, you get chicks! Yay! They are so cute and active and now you need to feed them. Your chicks are very vulnerable so it’s important to pick a high protein food meant for chicks so they get the nutrients they need plus the crumbles are small enough they will not choke.
We feed our chicks Nature’s Best 20% Organic Chick Starter/Grower Crumbles. We like Nature’s Best as its all organic, Non-GMO, antibiotic free, made in the US and also started as a small farm that has grown over the years.
Vitamin E is an important vitamin to prevent wry neck (this is when their neck is stuck in a certain direction and they cannot move it). We use this electrolyte packette that is packed with vitamins and mixes easily into their water.
You can also feed your chicks treats, just like your fully grown hens, but in much smaller portions, you want to be sure they are eating their crumbles.
Once your chicks reach 18 weeks old, they can move to adult feed.
March 2022 Chicks
MAIN ADULT FEED
When picking your main feed you want to make sure the protein level is 16% or higher. This is important to keep your chickens active and healthy. It’s also important to pick the feed type that is for the intended use of your chickens, layer feed for egg layers, broiler feed for breeders and meat feed for chickens to be butchered for human consumption.
As I said I love Nature’s Best, so we give ours Natures Best Organic 16% Egg Layer Pellets. Again, it’s organic, non-GMO and antibiotic free, my intention is to have the healthiest egg possible so we want a nutritious feed and a happy chicken! We also add whole corn to the feed that we buy from a local farmer, the bag is 50lbs for $15 and they have a stand all year round. We mix the layer pellets and corn together in a 3 to 1 scoop ratio.
Chickens are messy! They spill a ton of food which can be a huge waste and extra cost. We have 2 hanging feeders in our run that are under a lean-to, so the food stays dry. Underneath the hanger we keep a large plastic bin to catch the spilled food, then dump it back in every day. We also add two scoops of new pellet corn mix each day to both hangers. Then every Sunday we dump the hangers into a bowl and refresh the feed, this bowl is left out for the chickens to eat, but its usually just the dusty end of the feed.
We also have a bowl of grit and oyster shells that the chickens can eat when they want. Grit, rocks broken up into little pieces, is essential in a chickens diet to help them digest. Chickens do not have teeth so the rocks help the chickens grind the food up, if grit is not offered your chickens will be more susceptible to sour crop, this is when the food rots inside the chickens stomach while it breaks down. Offering oyster shells is also important, the calcium is absorbed and helps create a strong egg shell.
TREATS
Chickens love treats, who doesn’t! Here are some examples of what we give our chickens.
Worms: Flock Party Dynamic Duo
Scratch: Cluck & Co. Scratch Grain Mix
Kitchen scraps (cucumber peel, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, an apple that has one bite out of it because the kids were so hungry…until they weren’t, over ripe/soft bananas, left overs: rice, salad without dressing, black beans, boiled broccoli)
Raw fish such as clams
Fodder or sprouted grains
Corn on the cob
Watermelon/Zucchini/Pumpkins
This is an example of what our chickens get as treats.
Left over salad that does not have salad dressing, bananas I let get too ripe and some other fruit that is over ripe.
I usually bring the food out like this, then open up the bananas and other items when I am in the run. The chickens will leave the peels and I rake it out and put it into the compost.
We have two bins that sit on the kitchen counter, one for scraps that go to the chickens and the other for regular compost. Below are the links to the ones we use, but there are so many cute options out there that match your kitchen decor.
Compost Bins:
This one we use for kitchen scraps that go to the chickens daily. Its really convenient to put beside your cutting board on the counter.
This one we use for other items that the chickens cannot have but can still be composted, like coffee grounds.
WHAT NOT TO FEED
There are numerous things you should NOT feed your chickens. Basically before I feed mine anything new, I always do a quick search on the internet to check if it’s ok. Here is a brief list of everything you should not feed your chickens.
dry beans
raw potatoes or potato skins
green tomatoes
citrus peels
avocado
processed foods
raw meat
raw eggs
garlic
onions
anything with oil or butter
moldy food
excessive amounts of dairy products
STORAGE
This is a very important part to consider before you buy any food, because you do not want your feed to be contaminated with bugs or eaten by rodents. Always keep feed and treats in a tight sealed container so that it stays fresh, dry and pest free.
Gamma2 Vittles Vault Air tight containers in 60lb and 40lb. Stackable and durable, we have had ours for a year now with no issues.
And there you have it! You are now well educated on feeding your chickens and have a lot of great recommendations on feed and equipment.
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All product and material recommendations are by personal experience, they work for us and our chickens.
