We're new to chickens, and we're just finding out their favorite foods. Just wondering what everyone else's like to eat (besides chicken food, that is). I had some dried mealworms that were supposed to attract bluebirds to the feeder, and didn't- but the chickens love them! They also go crazy when we stick a kale leaf or collard leaf through the fence. They peck it down to nothing in less than a minute, it's like a shark or piranha attack!
What else do chickens like?
Snacks for Chickens?
mine get dried or fresh parsely now and then. baby chicks go nuts for it as it is so light and fluffy, it kinda floats in the air [the dried one]
mine go nutso for watermelon!
mine go crazy over tomatoes and bread. if my rooster don't get bread he goes in the coop to pout
what a wuss!
i know, he is way too funny. he comes running when ever i call him, and if i don't have bread with me he goes off to pout!
Hello everyone. We have been very bust this week trying to catch up .
My chics are about 5 or 6 weeks old now, most have lots of feathers .
They love apples, plums cantalopes . I am now giving them very small pieces of corn leaves and grass.I also have plenty of abbage rtha didn't turn a head .
Ducks are getting lots of feathers too but don't know how old they are , they have white spines or quills '?' growing out of tail and wings .they love grass ,corn leaves,cabbage .So far they don't like fruits like chics do .
Anything we shouldn't feed them ?
For our chickens, I keep a scrap bucket in the kitchen, where I scrape food off of plates into, and put 'extras' like carrot peelings, egg shells, etc. The only thing I have found, it that they will eat about anything, but don't really care for potato peels or onion skins.....that may just be mine though.
Also, and I hope this doesn't sound awful to anyone, but when I clean out the fridge or something has gone bad, I give them that too. They really seem to love it......and then I can feel that I haven't really wasted anything!
Most critters won't touch potatoes (especially the skin) or onions. In fact vets don't advise feeding onions to your dog.
I was looking for stuff to give my waterfowls and remembered we have a of cattails. I went and snipped the tips off the younger plants. The ducks were wild about it and the geese ate them too.
MollyD
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll have to try some fruit. Now my husband is afraid for them to free range, he wants to protect his tomatoes, lol.
Threw some old cornbread in today and it was a bit hit!
wow molly, I didn't know onions were bad for dogs......I just knew that chocolate could kill them. Makes sense though, onion affects a lot of people's bellies too.
Lakesidecallas....you probably should be worried about the tomatoes......chickens LOVE tomatoes!!! We learned this the hard way one year....the chickens found them, ate them ALL!! We didn't even get one that year....:( My dh is going to build an outside run for them this year, so we don't lose any this year.
Full grown chickens will eat just about anything. My 6 hens love popcorn, oatmeal, bread, cooked carrots, watermelon, cantalope, corn cobs (they'll peck at them) and I have even given them a LITTLE bit of beef or pork fat (this is a good source of protein). Chickens aren't picky eaters. Just don't forget that these items are snacks and that they still need pellets and chicken scratch.
good point smith_s.... esp growing chickens...
About the only thing my ladies (and gents) won't eat are rinds of all sorts, orange, lemon, watermelon, cantelope, squash, etc. They will, however, eat my grapes off the vine before they are ripe. I planted a vine last year and it had two bunches that they got.
We had a wild tomato grow up right outside their coop and they even ate the leaves off it. They didn't touch the actual fruit, tho. We also had a cushaw vine grow right near the coop but didn't bother it. I did have to cover it right at first so they wouldn't think it was gourmet salad. They free range only for a couple of hours in the evening so don't get too much time to spend in the garden where the good stuff is.
GG
GRAPES!! They were always the favorite. It made for great entertainment, too. Whichever chicken got the first grape was chased by the others. Didn't matter that I had a whole bunch left :). Silly chickens. Canned corn, any melon bits (once gave them a cracked watermelon, and they cleaned it out very quickly. Lots of fun to see them darting in and out of the broken shell.
BTW, Grapes and raisins are also toxic for dogs, can result in kidney failure. Onions and garlic can cause Heinz body anemia, Chocolate, heart issues. The darker the chocolate the worse the problem, as it's the theobromine content that causes problems.
HTH
margo
Thanks, Margo, did know some of that but not the results. Never fed any of that to the animals. And made sure they couldn't get into them.
GG
Our chickens loved anything vegetable. Old giant zucchini - we usually had to break them open because the big ones have tough rinds, but then the chickens would hollow them out in a hurry. Tomatoes, old apples, watermelon, greens, etc. They have a carnivorous side too - worms, bugs, even a frog accidentally run over with the lawn mower.
We always put out feed and scratch grain, but in the summer, they would eat more stuff outside than they would of the chicken feed. And the eggs were great!
Looking forward to our new batch of chicks....
my dh says that in the winter you should give chickens some hamburger or something with higher protein in it, because with them not being able to get bugs, worms, etc.....they will turn on each other, get a weaker one down and eat that one to get the extra protein. Pretty gross sounding.......has anyone ever heard of this or experienced anything like that?
Margo is dead on about chocolate. It's 'poisonous' to most animals. Raises the BP till they have a stroke or heart attack. Especially birds.
MollyD
Oops, I was talking about the grapes and chocolate, not any other veggies. Ours get any and all veggie peelings, leftovers and also meat except for bones. They thrive on that stuff. And since they free range part of the time in the summer, they also get bugs, beetles, and worms and stuff. We have never had a problem with that.
We haven't been giving them hamburger in the winter, but I told DH were going to start doing that since we seemed to have a problem with not enough protein last year with the BAs. We didn't have that problem with the other chickens we had. Unfortunately, this is one breed we will not be getting again.
GG
You are certainly correct about the theobromine in chocolate being poisonous. My standard poodle ate a pound of milk chocolate and began having epileptic seizures the next night. He had cluster seizures, meaning they have one right after the other. He had twelve in one day, which could easily have killed him. Absolutely horrible, horrible, to watch your pet suffer that way.
The vet kept saying the chocolate didn't cause the epilepsy, but my dog had never had seizures before, so I still question that.
The theobromine cannot be eliminated through the kidneys with dogs, it just keeps circulating in the blood stream.
Which reminds me of something else. Not sure theobromide and bromide are the same, but they sure look similar. Dr. Fletchas has some tapes online about iodine and how most of us are terribly deficient. He said one of the reasons is because in 1966 they took the iodine out of our flour and milk and started putting bromide in the flour and also in many of our soft drinks, including Gatorade. Not sure what chemical they use now to sterilize the cows for milking, but it is no longer iodine. Anyway, this tape says bromide is also a poison to human beings and can cause paranoid schizophrenia and other illnesses. I found it extremely interesting considering the Japanese rarely get cancer, and they get 100 times the iodine we do. Do you know that the IQ of a child is also relative to the amount of iodine he gets in the first three years of life? This is a serious issue.
Sorry for being off topic.
Karen
plus the nine months in utero i'm sure!
Interesting- I thought that's why they make iodized salt.
Hey Karen, I'm not sure what some of the big dairies use, but my dh and I lived in Wisconsin for 6 years, 2001-2007, and we had our own dairy farm. We used iodine as a pre-dip and post dip.....hard on the hands after awhile, but kept the nasty germs from the cows. I think most of the small dairies around us used iodine too. Like I said though, the big ones are probably using something different, I'm just not sure what.
Christy
Here is the link to the tape if you are interested. I've probably listened to it 10 times and still learn things every time I hear it.
http://curezone.com/ig/i.asp?i=21726
Thanks Karen, I'll have to go check it out.
ladybug, i am just using a teat dip of alcohol and water. just one goat, so nobody to spread germs to/from...