[SurreyLass]

My 2 lovely girls have been with me nearly 3 weeks, and I bought layers pellets as their main food. I give them something extra every day - left over cooked veg, pasta, rice etc.
(a) what dont your like? (b) how much is enough / how much is too much extra - I know that the nutricianal requirement is in the pellets, so want to make sure they eat that. I do also mix in a bit of mixed corn with the pellets.

Do yours like everything cooked first???

These chickens are like kids arent they - so much to learn about to look after them, but I am already head over heels!!!

[Lastcast]

Hi Surreylass,
 welcome to the forum, I keep 12 hens on my allotment so conditions are slightly different to yours however, common practice would say give layers pellets in the morning and then a handfull of corn per hen in the late afternoon. If I give mine treats I again try to use the same measure i.e. a handfull per hen. It's trial and error really, what you don't want is surplus food to remain on the ground overnight for rats or mice to find. As for treats mine love cooked pasta, rice, sweetcorn and I usually cook up veg peelings etc. of course they also get as many greens as i can get hold of. good luck, enjoy your hens and their lovely eggs

[Casey76]

"extra" food should be no more than  5% of the diet, which roughly equates to about a tablespoon of mixed grain per day.

[joyfull]

Defra rules state that they should not be fed anything that has been prepared in your kitchen so really the only treats should be a small quantity of mixed corn or other grains such as wheat, a couple of mealworms (protein but high in fat), sunflower seeds (again high in fat so not many) etc.

[Aunt Sally]

It's not a good idea to mix grain in with their pellets.  It's like mixing sweets into you childs sheepherds pie.  They are certain to pick out the sweets, leave the nutritious food on the plate and demand more sweets.

[Lindeggs]

Defra rules state that they should not be fed anything that has been prepared in your kitchen so really the only treats should be a small quantity of mixed corn or other grains such as wheat, a couple of mealworms (protein but high in fat), sunflower seeds (again high in fat so not many) etc.

Wow, that's an amazing rule!  :blink:  So I shall have to give advice as if your hens were in NZ. 

If you were in NZ, I would suggest that potato peelings should always be cooked before feeding to your hens, and also be very careful not to feed any green bits.  Green potatoes are toxic to humans and to chickens.

Also take great care not to feed them spoiled or mouldy food.

Apart from that, most vegetable scraps can be fed either raw or cooked.  Some hens have a preference - for example some love raw pumpkin, others prefer it softened slightly by cooking.

I have a glut of pumpkins and other autumn-harvested vegtables so the other day when I made soup for dinner, I made a second pot of "chicken soup" ie soup for chickens.  It was all the potato and pumpkin peelings, all the centre part of the pumpkin (including seeds), chopped brocolli stalks, soft tomatoes, etc.  I cooked it slightly in a bit of water, chopped it roughly in the food processor, and divided it up into approximately 1-cup portions. 

I have frozen all the portions so now when I want to give the girls a warm winter mash I can just thaw one out and add it to their regular food to make a damp mash.  (For some reason they adore slightly dampened food rather than dry.)

I'm glad to hear you are enjoying your chickens.  I haven't had mine for long but they are already part of my life and I love having them around. 

[joyfull]

the ruling all stems from the mad cow episode where animals were fed on food that they should not eat  , so really it is a sensible rule if you take that into consideration.

[Lindeggs]

the ruling all stems from the mad cow episode where animals were fed on food that they should not eat  , so really it is a sensible rule if you take that into consideration.

I agree, Joyfull.  The BSE episode was dreadful and there obviously need to be strict rules to make sure nothing like that happens again.  I know a lot of countries tightened up their rules after that - it was a terrible lesson for the whole world.  

I'm just a little surprised that the rule is so wide-reaching though.  For example in my kitchen there is never any meat, but 'officially' under those rules I wouldn't be able to feed vegetable scraps to my chickens?

Sorry, I don't mean to steer this thread off-topic, but I'm genuinely surprised and interested in the breadth of the rules.

[helens-hens]

I can understand why the laws were brought in for commercial set ups - after all, if memory serves me right they found back then that a lot of the feedstuffs given to animals, even those you associate as being herbivores eg cattle, contained ingredients which were effectively made from the remains of rendered remains of other livestock.

Going back to the earlier part of the twentieth century lots of people kept poultry in their backyards and I think feeding them with kitchen scraps was commonplace, waste not want not & all that (I think Penguin books recently reprintedg a book from the era which explains how it was done).

Do the DEFRA rules apply even to hobbyist keepers likemyself with just a couple of hens where eggs are for personal use or given away?