Supplement Approach
According to proponents of supplements, supplemented hens lay better eggs, and supplemented broilers taste better. That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself. What we present here are methods that chicken keepers can use to supplement their chickens’ diets.
Grit and Oyster Shells
Since chickens don’t have teeth, they swallow grit—tiny pebbles and other hard objects—to grind their food. If your chickens free-range, or if you use easily digestible commercial feed, you won’t need to provide your birds with grit. Otherwise, commercial grit (ground limestone, granite, or marble) can be mixed with their scratch or container-fed to chickens on a free-choice basis.
Ground oyster shell is too soft to function as grit, but it’s a terrific calcium booster for laying hens. Feeding oyster shell to hens on a free-choice basis allows the hens to eat it when they wish.
Scratch
Many hobbyists and small-flock owners supplement commercial feed with scratch in measured proportions to not upset the nutritional balance of the feed. Scratch is a mixture of two or more whole or coarsely cracked grains, such as corn, oats, wheat, milo, millet, rice, barley, and buckwheat.
Chickens adore scratch grains. Chickens instinctively scratch the earth with their sharp toenails to rake up bugs, pebbles for grit, seeds, and other natural yummies. Scratch strewn on their indoor litter, anyplace outdoors, or in separate indoor feeders satisfies that urge.
Greens and Insects
Hobby farmers and poultry enthusiasts often grow “chicken gardens” of cut-and-come-again edibles like lettuce, kale, turnip greens, and chard. Chickens of all types and sizes relish greens. Greens-chomping hens lay eggs with dark, rich yolks.
Insects add protein to chickens’ diets. Free-range chickens harvest their own bugs, but coop and run-caged birds don’t have that chance. Capture katydids, grasshoppers, and other tasty insects to toss to your chickens. If you do, they’ll soon come running when they spot you.
Good Home Cookin’
Chickens happily devour table scraps. Avoid fatty, greasy, salty stuff; anything spoiled; avocados; and uncooked potato peels. Also, strongly scented or flavored scraps, such as onions, garlic, salami, and fish, can flavor hens’ eggs. Almost everything else from your table will be fine—even baked goods, meat, and dairy products. Your chickens will love it all.
Many folks assume that free-range chickens will grow healthy eating seeds, weeds, and bugs. They won’t. However, if you supplement free-range findings with scratch or commercial feed, your chickens will cheerfully rid your yard and orchard of termites, ticks, Japanese beetles, grasshoppers, grubs, slugs, and dropped fruit. One caveat: they’ll also strip your garden clean, so think “fenced garden” if you raise free-range chickens.
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