Treats for your chickens?

[montanabill]

I picked up some treats for the chickens with worms and oats and various things. I also scatter cracked corn and I have layer pellets but they don't seem too interested in those after a summer of chasing grasshoppers on our deer fenced half acre.
For those worried about a fancy chicken house or cold weather here is my camper shell on a plywood riser with roosts on the back wall. Lots of straw on the floor and some store bought nests on the wall. The 13 girls are laying 8 or 9 a day even without some extra lighting here in rocky mountain montana where the temp hasn't been above freezing much lately.

 

[Amish Heart]

Ours like canned corn. It's chicken crack.

 

[ClemKadiddlehopper]

They are liking the apple peels at the moment. They go nuts over raw meat scraps. Summer they get maggots.

 

[Ozarks hillbilly]

Wife puts out left over veggies, but I think their favorite is when she either gives them canned corn or carrots

 

[Patchouli]

Leftover watermelon rind and frozen vegetables, that’s what my chicken friends tell my daughters to do to keep their chickens cool and hydrated. My girls take care of the chickens when the people go away for a few days or weeks.

 

[Cascadian]

Ours get lots of extras from the garden and kitchen. They also get meal worms on rare occasions.

 

[Hooch]

Tortillas...just before roosting time in the early evening on the weekends I grab usually 3 torts and tear them up into little bits.
I go outside, n call my chickies..they know what that call means n now all the turkey babies are figuring it out.
I think its hilarious! I go out the door, make the call n about 2 dozen birds come running/flying to me .
I make sure they all get a chance to get a nibble to two as I walk everyone back towards the coop.
Otherwise during the week they get scraps n leftovers. They love their torts tho..n it's a easy way to get the roosted up early if I have to.

 

[Magus]

Crushed oyster shells, pea gravels, hog innards, and suet.

 

[Bacpacker]

Mine go crazy over fresh cut grass. And kitchen scraps

 

[LadyLocust]

The only thing I gave them in addition to their food (they were free range during the day) was the carcass of any critter we got. After we were done processing it, we would give it to them and they would clean those bones like you wouldn’t believe.

 

[rice paddy daddy]

Besides layer crumbles for their basic feed, ours get kitchen scraps - vegetable trimmings, fruit rinds, leftovers that we are sick of by the third day.
They wander about during the day, taking dust baths and rooting for any bugs.
Not counting the six old girls, we have two roosters and 24 hens.
The wife was rinsing off a two day supply of eggs this evening and I counted 37 on the sink side board.
Our old girls are about 8 years old and still give us an egg or two every day. Treat your hens right and they will take care of you.

 

[Mountain trapper]

The wife buys freeze dried worms for her chickens.

 

[rice paddy daddy]

Occasionally one of us will get some live crickets at the bait store.
It is pure pandemonium when you dump those out on the ground!!!

 

[Tim Horton]

When I lived in the far north we would give our layers a warm gruel with many different ingredients.. The recipe starting with a couple hands full of scratch grain, kitchen scraps, about a liter of home canned ground apples... We also used rose hips canned with the ground apples.. This all with some water and warmed well on the wood fired kitchen cook stove... This an old trick learned from our older Nova Scotia relatives..

Our friends with a butcher shop routinely gave us organ meats, suit, raw lard fat and the like that people didn't want.. The organ meats we ground and canned or froze in half liter size portions.. We froze, and ground much of the fats refreezing in baseball size portions adding this to the mix to thaw as it warmed on the stove..

The addition of the extra protein or fats, plus the feed being warm seemed to make a significant difference in egg production in cold and low light time of the year.. Our motley flock was mostly end of peak production cycle, culled Isa Brown hens we could always get replacements for as needed...