[jertzee]

I am sure I read a list on this forum of foods and scraps that are good and bad for chooks but I can't for the life of me find one - anyone help me please!!??

Thanks

[orchardlady]

Hello Jertzee.

This is my list but is by no means definitive. I'll start the ball rolling and I'm sure others will add their bit to.

The obvious is Layers Pellets. Ad lib during the day.

Mixed corn or corn. A couple of small handfuls an hour or two before bed.

Hens are omnivores so will have a go at a great many things.

The slightly distasteful things are: Slugs, flies, butterflies, frogs, newts, mice, dead animals including each other...Shudder....

Meat. Always a mixed variety of opinions. I personally don't feed meat but if they find a frog, worm, slug etc well lucky them. A sick chicken can be fed tinned cat food but please not chicken variety, again that's just my delicate sensibilities.

An occasional tin of tuna in spring water, not brine as too salty.

Spaghetti...fun fun fun!

Rice and pasta.

All green leafed veg including broccoli and cauliflower. I try to feed raw but if you had cabbage etc. for dinner that was of course cooked that's good to.

I like to thread cabbage leaves on a piece of galvanised wire so that it looks like a cabbage Christmas wreath and suspend it within pecking distance. They are very comical to watch as it swings around as they try to get a peck in. It is also a useful way of giving them something to do and means also that you don't have to pick up the skeletal hard woody pieces they don't eat. It's usually still attached to the wire at the end of the day and can easily be slipped off into the bin.

All fruit except citrus fruit.

Advocardo pears. They will eat the flesh and leave the stone and skin.

Corn on the cob even when you have eaten it the hens still get plenty off the cob.

Peas, cooked or defrosted.

Beans, mine won't eat hard woody runner beans (other peoples will I believe) but are happy to eat broad beans if you open the pod for them.

Root veg. As long as it's cooked eg potatoes, parsnip etc.

Bread (very sparingly) viewed as a treat, soaked in water.

Left over porridge or breakfast cereals.

Rasins but sparingly think toddler portions.

Nuts again think toddler portions.

Sunflower seeds in or out of shells.

Wild bird food.

Meal worms, a BIG treat as they are rather expensive.

Pop along to your local independent green grocer and ask for their trimmings. When they receive cabbages, cauliflowers etc from their supplier they come with all their outer leaves that need to be trimmed off, they also dispose of bruised fruit and the occasional potato that is too colossal or has been damaged.

Hope this is enough to be going on with!!!

[tesni]

..............what she said!
and mine love the skins from melons when we have had our fruit salad, very funny to watch them chase the half footballs as they roll about.  They leave not a speck of the juicy flesh 

[orchardlady]

Just to clarify.

All the things I've suggested are in addition to their layers pellets ad lib and corn or mixed corn in the late afternoon. These should be the hens main diet not the rest of my list. Items like pasta should be your table scraps not cooked just for them.

[louiseb22]

my girls love all the above as well as tomatoes and the ends of strawberries that i cut off (i cut a generous part of the flesh off not just the stalk lol) however make sure there is enough for all or its scrum time! funny to watch though! my little girl who loves the tomatoes more than the chucks do but thinks is funny to run round the garden with tomatoes as they chase after her.
had no interest in bananas and have been told not to give raw potatoes or the peelings,,, always give those cooked.

[Pip Judgeford]

My girls love cooked fish frames (lovely home-smoked fish for me) and will pick a frame completely bare.  Same for bones from lamb chops or beef roasts.  I do draw the line at roast chickens though!  Then when they are finished with the bones I put them (the bones that is) in the fire to create high calcium ash.

= Pip

[evie2]

Layers pellets are always available and we only give them treats about 5ish although as the days get shorter it will be earlier.  They go mad for pasta, rice and baked potato, Queenie climbs into the tub to keep the others out!  Cooked and uncooked veg, wind fall apples, plumbs, damsons and pears, melon, tuna, sardines, rabbit food when Evie gave them some, porridge and basically anything that stands still

I don't give them eggs or chicken though  

[tiptopchickendon]

Mine go ape on porridge, rice, pasta and their 2 current favourites Beetroot leaves and (not together i might add) Yought !

They cover themselves in it 

[Jeanette]

Blackbeeries i gave my girls some
yesterday and they loved them.

[orchardlady]

As I was walking my dogs today I thought of the list. There are lots of hedgerow treats at the moment, elderberry, wild plums, blackberries etc.

[evie2]

Our big girls are falling over each other for over ripe damsons and the poots do the same for apples, they make a hole then hollow out the apple so if you turn it over, as one of my darlings did you think it's a whole apple

[jinty1911]

Only had mine a week and tried lots of treats but fresh corn on the cob got to be the favorite so far, oh and the rabbits food when they can get in the hutch.

[Junie]

I always boil up the potato peelings - they love them.  As for the blackberries and beetroot - makes for an interesting floor the next day!
Natural yoghurt with some sort of grain in ( ie pasta or cous cous) stand well back though as they will flick it everywhere lol.