Feeding Your Chickens

Free Ranging and Training Chickens...

What to feed your chickens will ultimiltey depend on what you expect from your chickens. Do you want them to produce organic eggs? Are you just raising them as your pets or are you looking to plump them up to eat for meat?

Firstly, feeding your chickens is extrely simply. Chickens will eat almost anything that you put in front of them as long as it’s not too hard or tough. Of course you can take a trip to the pet store and pick up a bag of chicken food. Chicken food comes in the form of pellets.

However there is a much healthier and cheaper way to feed your chickens. Since they will eat nearly anything you can give them your leftover foods – you can give them the peels of many foods that we are unable to eat, or vegetables. But as with any creature there will be foods that are good for them and other’s that will not be. So it’s important that you learn which foods that you chickens can and cannot have. 

Here is a simple list of foods that chickens should not eat:

Watermelon rinds are too thick and tough for them to chew.

Carrots are also to thick and tough for chickens to chew.

Tomatoes are okay but as a treat. These can reduce the number of droppings that the chicken has.

Apples can be given in small quanities but only about every two weeks because apples tend to give the chickens a stomach ache.

Okay so you now know some of the foods that chickens should not eat, let’s take a look at some of the foods that chickens can eat. Chickens love grass, but grass doesn’t offer them a lot of calories. They will be content with just grass but there are not enough nutrients in grass to keep them healthy and producing healthy eggs.

In order to remain healthy chickens will need to have some sort of protein in their diet, and that will definitley not be found in grass. The best thing that you can do is to give the grains and fish meal. You will find that this will give you the healhiest and happiest chickens that you have seen.

If you are raising chickens for the purpose of having a pet, but also want to benefit from never having to purchase eggs again then you should read what I am about to say very carefully. What goes into your chickens will also go into your eggs and then into your body. Keep them healthy and free of any harmful chemicals and pesticides and you will have chemical free and pesticides free eggs.

But that’s not all.

You should also add Omega-3 fatty acids into their diet so that you can benefit from the many things that it has to offer such as helping to lower your cholesterol. It doesn’t hurt to give your pet chickens the necessary vitamins and supplements that they need and that you also can greatly benefit from as well.

These are your pets, and you love them. When you love your pets it’s always important give them the things that they need to live long and healthy lives. Don’t forget to give them some special treats every now and then, such as grapes. You should learn more about the foods that will improve your chickens health and the foods that can harm your chickens health.

Owning chickens as pets will help to improve your own health in many ways, such as from the eggs that they produce to the stress reduction that they offer from watching them clown around with you and the other chickens.

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  1. what is the best type of food for them. I would prefer to give them the best if possible as they are not for meat but eggs and selling the chicks. they do have a large area to run around in but 3 or 4 times a week the cross breeds are let out to roam 5 acres.

    The pure bred do not have that luxury. As I would not want the wrong rooster to get hold of them.

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