Feeding Your Hens
Feeding your hens
Your chickens can obtain up to 25% of their protein by foraging for grass and insects, and you can add (non-meat) kitchen scraps to their diet for variety. (Things like leftover cooked rice and pasta as well as veggies and fruit can all be given to your hens as treats. Just avoid citrus fruits, or anything that is salty, sugary or fatty.)
Your hens however should always be fed a complete chicken food of either pellets or meal, to keep them in top laying condition. The average hen will eat between 100-150 grams of complete food a day. So if you start with 3 hens expect to go through a 20 kg bag of layers pellets every 40 to 50 days. That would set you back in the region of about £10 per bag. (You can buy their feed online or from local farmers feed supply store or even high street pet stores.)
You can also supplement this with around 20 grams of grain or corn per bird per day. But a little tip is to NOT feed them grain and chicken feed mixed together or in the morning.
Like a small child with chocolate chip cookies, the chickens will simply pick out the tasty grain, filling their crops and reducing their intake of the more nutritious complete food. An unbalanced diet can adversely affect egg production, so grain should be given as a treat, perhaps in the afternoon when the day’s supply of fresh shoots and pellets has been eaten.
Having a ‘treat bag’ of mixed corn is a must. When we first got our girls my daughters were desperate to get them to eat out of their hand and also stroke them, but after almost a week of quietly sitting with them in the run, offering them handfuls of organic pellets they still were weary of us. Then a friend suggested I try using mixed corn and kindly gave me a few huge scoopfuls to take home.
The next time I went down to check on them I sat quietly as always and threw a few small handfuls of the grain near the hens. There initial reaction was to scatter in all directions (I guess from my sudden hand movement) but it only took a few moments for them to realise that I meant no harm and they pretty much attacked the floor and within seconds had pecked up every last grain. You’d think they had never been fed!
I threw a few more handfuls down, this time a little closer and that too was polished off.
The following day, I repeat this process all the while making the distance between them and myself closer. On the third day they were eating out of our hands.
It’s a great way to get them back into the hen house in the beginning or to bribe them to do anything really. So it’s your ace up your sleeve!
But just to reiterate – they need to be mainly feed pellets or meal/crumb and the best time to get them to eat is in the morning. No treats until later in the day.
