geneal advice

hi im new to keeping chickens so any advice would be great i have 6 ex battery chucks they were feather pecked and pretty bald when i got them they are all  back to full plumage and dning well but im still not sure if i am feeding them correctly they are fully free range of our large garden plenty of bugs and grass for them to peck at through the day i feed them on layers pellets when putting them to bed and have a constant sipplt of water day end night
they are a real addiction now as i didnt intend to haven chickens but would not be without my girls

Good advice from Joyfull, as usual!

I started with ex-bats and mine also free range. However, they have access to their enclosure way before I'm up & about to let them out in the garden and that's when they start eating. It's important that they have access to chicken feed at all times during daylight hours, especially as there's so much more interesting things to eat than they've known in their previous life.

Mine started ignoring pellets for a while - grass, grubs & other goodies always took their fancy first - and they started to lose weight & condition. The advice I was given (and pass on to you) was to keep them in their run for the first couple of hours so that they ate their fill of pellets before going out to forage, that way they got all the essentials in the right proportions that formulated poultry feed is designed to give them.