Pictured above, a special treat tray I prepared for my flock with grub worms, canned corn, and green beans.

When it comes to chicken nutrition, many factors will need to be considered when you’re determining what is best for your flock. The breed of chicken you’ve chosen, their age, their stress levels, their health, their environment, all play a role in determining what foods would be best for them. It may take some experimenting to dial in your flock’s nutrition for maximum health, wellness, and productivity. It may seem daunting but luckily there is a wealth of information to draw from. Below are some of the things have worked for me and have kept my backyard flock healthy and thriving.

1) Buy life stage appropriate food. As your chickens grow and develop their nutritional needs will change. Chick food lacks essential ingredients for laying adult hens. Adult chicken food can be harmful to chicks. Buy the right food for your chicken’s life stage. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different brands and textures (layers or crumbles). When transitioning between textures do so slowly like you would when transitioning any animal food.

2) Buy the highest quality chicken feed you can. When you can’t, the box store brand is fine, but it’s helpful to feed your chickens the highest quality food you can.

3) Kitchen scraps as treats. I supplement our chicken pellets with occasional kitchen scraps. These are things that are undesirable for people to eat (apple skins, celery bottoms, cucumber ends etc.) but I’m sure not to give them spoiled or rotting food, nothing with visible mold or that smells bad. Be sure to clean up treats before nightfall to avoid attracting vermin to your chicken area. Never feed your chickens anything that contains chocolate, caffeine, avocado, or alcohol. I also avoid giving them anything overly sticky as this can cause choking. If in doubt, don’t feed them the scrap and rely on their nutritionally balanced feed.

4) Respond to your chicken’s health and life stages. For example, many of our flock are going through their first molt. I’m providing extra protein in the form of all flock feed (higher protein content) and I supply calcium in the form of oyster shells year round. I’ll remove the all flock feed from their pellet mix when they’re finished molting. Other instances when you’re chickens might require additional nutrition are: caring for chicks, recovering from illness, recovering from parasites, etc.

5) Consider providing extra nutritious treats if your chickens are stressed. To be clear, you should be doing everything possible to mitigate any stress your flock is experiencing because chronic stress can cause illness and even death in chickens. But sometimes, stressful situations are unavoidable like noisy inconsiderate neighbors or introducing new flock members. I’ve found a well timed treat can do a lot to ease tensions and smooth over a rough period of interruption or transition.

6) Scratch grain is chicken junk food. I don’t know about you but my ladies love this stuff but it is not nutritionally complete and is essentially chicken junk food. This is to be used as a treat and sparingly. It is not a replacement for a balanced pellet or crumbled layer feed.

7) Balance treats and proper nutrition. It is totally possible to spoil your flock to the point they neglect their balanced, complete formula food in favor of treats. This can cause health issues. Give treats sparingly and remove them when needed so your chickens are still getting the majority of their nutrition from their balanced feed.

8) Forage CANNOT be your chicken’s sole means of nutrition. It is wonderful if you have the option to free range your flock with ample forage, but foraged food alone is NOT sufficient to feed your birds. Forage can make a portion of their diet but you need to be supplementing their nutrition in some other way. Your chickens are not wild animals like their ancestors; they are domesticated livestock and cannot get all the nutrition they need from foraging.

9) Your bird’s purpose will impact their nutrition. Show birds, layer birds, meat birds, will all have different nutritional needs. Your bird’s purpose will impact what food is best for them.

10) Make sure your chickens have access to fresh food and water at all times. While some people may choose to food ration because of the particulars of their situation, if you have the option, I highly recommend free feeding your chickens, or filling and refreshing a large feeder daily (with an ample supply for the whole day). Feeding them ration style you run the risk of under feeding, causing aggression at feeding times, or chickens choking when fed because they’re so hungry they gorge and endanger themselves. Food rationing is higher maintenance and higher health risk. Utilize an automatic feeder. There are many designs available to fit your particular set up and many can actually help you reduce food waste. Chickens do better with more choices, not less.