Chicken Food

     As shown in the video, there are a few different type of chicken food. The biggest two are the dry feed and fresh food.

    The dry feed is the stuff you buy at the store that comes in huge bags. That is all the stuff your chickens  need. You put it in a feeder so your chicken can easily eat it. There are different kinds of feed for different purposes of chickens. Chicks need Chick Feed. Egg hens will need Layer's Pellets. Meat chickens will need a high protein feed. Find what works for you and your chickens.

    I would recommend hanging the feeder or at the very least raising it off the ground. Chickens like to perch on the top on the feeder, which causes them to poop in it and get it dirty. It doesn't usually help them to perch on the feeder. Different feeders can change things. The feeder in the video is metal and has an open top. Some feeder are plastic and some have a closed top. The same with water dishes. Explore and find what works for you.

    Now fresh food. This one is fun. Chicken can eat almost anything. They cannot have citrus; orange, lime, lemon, or grapefruit. No part of it show you feed them. Now, onions and garlic are a fun one. They can flavor the eggs of your chickens if they eat onions or garlic. This is not recommended if you raising your chickens for eggs. I would stay away from most processed foods. Otherwise, you can feed them pretty much whatever you want. This is nice for pets since it doesn't matter as much how good their meat or eggs are. If you are raising to sell, you might want to stick more to the dry feed. In my house, we put any unwanted food from cooking in a bucket and my chickens get their bucket food everyday. Everything goes in that bucket from cucumber ends to bones. Now my chickens may not eat everything, but my chicken coop doubles as a compost area. As you can see in the video, chickens love their bucket food.

    We do feed our chicken eggshells. This helps my hens build thicker shells for their eggs. This is a personal choice. I do know people that do not do this because they do know want their chickens to know what eggs taste like. Chicken actually do love to eat eggs, even their own eggs. So that can be a worry. My chicken happen to rarely eat their own eggs. If you do not want to feed your chickens eggshells but also have thicker shells you can use what is called scratch. Its a hard material that is meant to thicken eggshells and get chicken to scratch the ground. The one that I buy is oyster shells. I find that my chicken don't eat it as well, so I don't use it as often.

    One more food type: treats! Most chicken treats are some kind of dried insect. My chickens love dried mealworms. These are great for your chickens. It's so much fun to throw some and watch them run around and get their treat.