Feed

Chickens eat just about anything they can get their beaks on, and free ranging should always be a part of their diet, however if their feed is in a controlled setting, grains are the most common thing to feed your flock. They definitely need a balanced diet that also includes fresh greens, bugs and other creepy crawlers they can find scratching. Chickens will not discriminate, they will catch mice, snakes, lizards really anything they can catch, which is another good reason not to introduce baby chicks into an already established flock, especially if you’re in an urban setting. Out in the rural areas where there is plenty of room to quarantine a flock to one acre is totally different. Here, they would likely kill and possibly eat the baby chicks, so it’s important for all hens to be around the same age, at least the same size.

Typically most farms will use corn, and/or some kind of layers pellets, which is a mixture of grains and grasses for a whole diet. We prefer to spend the extra 5-10 dollars on Organic NON GMO whole grain feed. I did so much reading about feed, and after asking in groups, it really depends on your intentions, the workings of a full functioning sustainable farm is completely different than what we have here in the city. So, choosing to raise hens for the best eggs we could possibly get, it only made sense to feed the girls the best food we would possibly get them. With a special needs son, and 3 other children, our main goal as a family is to be as consumer aware as possible, and to know what goes into every bite of food we take. It never made sense to me, why these farms use GM feed corn for livestock, and sell the meat as organic free range meat. Granted not all GMOs are bad or harmful, but a good 90% of our corn supply has been tampered with, and that’s not only worth noting, but definitely worth taking that extra step to get what you know is clean.

All chickens need some kind of grit in their diet, this is essential for digesting their food, they don’t have stomach acid like we do that dissolves everything into a pulp, instead they rely on their crop, the grit they ingest and their gizzard to digest what they eat. Oyster shell is the most common grit used, there are other rocks and minerals, like granite, but oyster shell seems to be the go to. You can certainly use your crushed egg shells if you save them, which is a great additive, but not strong enough alone to be considered the only grit you use. They also need some fresh wild greens, as if they were free ranging at all times, and adding your kitchen scrap to their diet is a great way to utilize every bit of waste you have left from food prep.