Feeding Poultry Garden Scraps

Offering chickens garden scraps is a good way to cut down on food waste and give the birds some variety in their diet. Your gardens vegetable scraps like cucumbers, zucchini and fruits and vegetables — including berries, apples, melons, and greens are all good choices.

Healthy Treats

You’d be bored if you ate the same thing day after day. Your chickens might feel the same way. It’s OK to offer the birds some garden scraps for a healthy treat from time to time. The treats should be offered after full feed to ensure the flock is getting the daily nutrients they need at meal time.

Joe Hess is an extension poultry specialist at Auburn University. He said offering garden scraps is a good way to cut down on waste and give the chickens some variety in their diet. “I would stick mostly with vegetable matter out of the garden, but also table scraps as well,” Hess said. “…most of the garden scraps and plant material is safe to feed.”

Items like citrus, rhubarb, nightshades, and green tomatoes are only a few items to compost rather than feed with the treats. These and other certain foods can cause health problems, breathing issues or death and are not safe for the chickens to consume.

Acreage owners Chris and Stu Buse. have a small backyard flock of Brahma, Sussex, Wyandotte, Marans and Rhode Island Red chickens in Dallas County, Iowa. Chris told us, “We feed them all with extra garden scraps when we have an abundance of garden vegetables. The treats are snacks that would otherwise go to waste.”

Table Scraps

Table scraps can be cooked food items like the leftover squash or vegetable medley. “Pantry extras in the forms of crackers, bread, and rice, along with stale cereal or chips are all good choices. ” Hess said. “It’s more of a problem if you feed them leftover meat scraps and things like that. “Never feed chickens spoiled or moldy food. The scraps can be raw or cooked, but the chickens probably prefer raw.

Your birds will happily gobble up all kinds of fruits and vegetables, including berries, apples, and greens, as well as bread and rice. Hess said you do have to be mindful of feeding strong-tasting foods. For example, if the birds eat too much garlic or onions, their eggs could pick up those flavors.

Buse said, “We feed them all scraps and foods including bread, stale chips and crackers and all dinner scraps. They enjoy grapes and cherry tomatoes the best, but we don’t feed them leftover chicken!”

Well Balanced Nutrition

All garden scraps should be given in moderation as a treat. Hess said this is important in order to keep the chickens’ diet in balance.

“There is an issue with that, and being a poultry nutritionist that’s one of the first things I think about,” Hess said. “We spend a lot of time formulating feeds so they’re perfectly balanced with the right amount of protein, the right amount of minerals, vitamins, and those sorts of things. It is possible to feed too much of the scraps so that they don’t eat enough of the commercial feed that is well-balanced.”

Weed Eaters

If you can allow the birds to roam around, spread the scraps in a weedy spot in the garden and they’ll scratch up the weeds for you. At the end of the garden season with a little adding fencing to contain them, turn the chickens out into your garden area so they can eat the garden remnants and fertilize the garden at the same time.