[Bodger]

If you are feeding a grain based diet to your chickens you are probably not giving them enough protein.
Wheat is about 12% protein and it's not enough. If you don't want to feed them the gunk that's in some poultry pellets try feeding soaked rolled green peas to them. They are about 21% and make a nice break for the birds as well.
I get them from the local agricultural merchants and they are quite reasonably priced . They are useful to tempt retiscent feeders to.

[richyrich7]

Thanks for that bodger nice tip

[Aunt Sally]

Munty gives them maggots (from road kill  :shock: )  

My girls  free range and dig for worms and bugs, and soppy old Aunty gives them meal worms and tuna too (not the type in brine but in spring water)  :roll:

[Bodger]

Chickens can get botulism or otherwise known as limberneck from maggots

[Aunt Sally]

You tell Munty then Bodger, coz I'm not  :!:

[slowef]

My girls won't touch maggots, glad about that cause I hated handling them and they stink to high heavens :?

[Bodger]

Munty and I go way back      He's a pussy cat

[Aunt Sally]

I love him to bits but he's your man with the birds  :roll:

[cluckingmad]

I tried to give my chooks the caterpillars I found on my sprouts.  They liked the green ones, but after trying the hairy ones, scraped their beaks on the path and walked off in disgust  :?

[Aunt Sally]

I'm not surprised !  Nasty hairy thing, they are irritant and often poisonous

[chickychick]

I am breeding worms for my chickens, but I only have 4 so not many needed.

I have a home made wormery which I oridinally started to get rid of waste food that was not suitable for the compost bin.

You do need to add a heavy brick on top to deter vermin if you add many food scraps.  

I have a big black plastic box with some earth in, I add compost type material and the worms eat it and multiply like mad in there.

I add table scraps too like little bits of dodgy cheese or meat, fallen apples etc, it gets recycled by the worms so I get compost which is very fine plus worms to feed to the chickens. I know I could feed the other stuff so the chickens directly but I think this is more natural and healthy.

The box has a few drainage holes at the bottom too but small of course so as not to lose your worms, you can get it started by collecting some red worms from your compost bin.

[Aunt Sally]

Great idea chickychick  

[muntjac]

my road kil is fresh kill tho .and shot rabbits