Reducing the cost of chicken feed

Backyard chickens will remain in good health if you give them a variety of good food but it's also worthwhile to see if you can reduce the cost of chicken feed while providing healthy food for your flock. To get a good supply of eggs, chickens need to eat high protein food. Most people feed commercial poultry food, either pellets or mash, but if you can add green leaves, table scraps, grains, stale bread or toast, and give them access to insects and worms you'll keep them happy and healthy while reducing the cost of keeping them fed. A good way to provide insects is to leave a couple of logs or tree branches around - untreated and unpainted. Keep them moist just by spraying them with the hose and over the months, as they start to decompose, they'll attract all sorts of bugs. Turn the logs over for the chooks every so often and watch them search for tasty morsels.

One of the easiest things to do is to have your chickens free ranging on grass that has not been sprayed or fertilised. The chicken droppings over the course of the day, and rain fall, will add to the fertility of the soil and the richness of the grass. Grass contains Omega 3 oils and if your chickens eat grass, there will be Omega 3 in the eggs you eat. Omega enriched eggs are very expensive at the supermarket so creating them in this natural way will save you money and give you healthier food. It will also reduce your feed bill.

As a general guide, fully grown chickens need about 120 - 150 grams of food a day. Larger breeds need 150 grams, smaller hens eat less. There will be instructions and guidelines on the side of the feed bag so be guided by that. I find that some chickens are hungry eaters and some are not. Our newly acquired New Hampshire and Barnevelders fight for food, even though they have the same access to food all day. If we give meat scraps to our girls, those four chickens run in and out of the others, scanning the ground for food and will peck it out of another chooks' beaks if they can.

Hanno asked for the bread crusts and ends when we were at the Bunya Festival the other day. He brought them home and mixed them up with a bit of milk. The chickens love this kind of food, it adds more protein to their diet and it keeps feed costs down.

Small chicks need starter mash, they don't eat the same food as the laying hens. If you're buying chicks, ask the breeder what to feed them and if they need "starter crumbs" that is found at the local produce store. Small chicks can eat any of the supplementary leaves and porridge I've mentioned.

If you have a vegie garden, pop in a few more plants that will suit the chooks. They love green leafy vegetables like silverbeet/chard, lettuce, cabbage, kale, spinach and all the Chinese greens like bok choy, wombok and tatsoi.  They also love radish tops and turnip greens. If you have a large parcel of land, grain and seed crops include corn, amaranth, sorghum, millet, wheat, oats and sunflowers. If you're in a warm area, pigeon pea is good too and best to pick it when it's green. They will eat the peas and the foliage.

This is the feeder we have for our chickens. When they stand on the step, it lowers and at the same time, opens the lid revealing the food. The chickens soon learn how to use it and although it's supposed to keep rats away from the food, the rats learn how to use it too.

Don't feed your chooks raw eggs because it may give them a taste for those lovely eggs sitting in the nest. But they can have boiled or poached eggs and they will love you for giving them milk, whey, yoghurt or cheese - you can mix all these in with bread, toast, oats, rice etc. Make sure the cheese is not mouldy but stale or dry cheese is fine. In winter, we feed our chickens warm porridge with milk. They love this, it warms them up on a cold winter's morning and it will help keep their protein levels up to keep you in eggs during the colder months.

Chickens always need fresh water. They will die without it. Give them fresh water every day and make sure they can access the water whenever they need it. Chickens graze and drink all through the day, they don't have set meal times like dogs and cats, so make sure their food is freely available to them and they'll return to it when they need a top up.

If your chooks are a bit sick or have diarrhoea, separate them from the flock and give them some real raspberry cordial, made according to the directions on the bottle. This will provide a good pick-me-up. Red cordial will not do; it must be cordial with real raspberry juice. If you can't find genuine raspberry cordial, here is a recipe for homemade: 

Raspberry Cordial recipe

2 cups crushed fresh or frozen raspberries

Juice of one lemon

1½ cups sugar syrup

8 cups of water

Bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes. Cool, then decant to clean bottles. Store in the fridge for up to two months or freeze in a plastic bottle.

To a bucket of water, add about two tablespoons.

The chickens we got from Julie in December are growing very well and are still in excellent health. I expect one of the New Hampshires to start laying in the next week or so, her sister should follow soon after that. I know that because their combs and wattles have grown in the past few weeks and they're now red - a sure sign of fertility. We've had to buy eggs recently because the old girls haven't laid much during the hotter months and the new girls are not ready yet. When they start up again, we'll have more eggs than we can eat and we can give some away. Feast or famine. If you keep chickens, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.