What to do if you want to feed kitchen scraps

When people ask about feeding out kitchen leftovers, their definition of ‘scraps ’is often vague. It also varies depending on the household.

If you want to feed scraps, you need to also ensure your flock is getting the nutrients they need to be healthy and productive.

Before you feed scraps, offer your flock a balanced commercial feed first and have it available for them throughout the day. This food contains all the essential nutrients the bird needs. Anything more, especially feed that is not balanced or nutritious, is diluting it. If you only offer pellets at the end of the day, a bird’s crop may be so full it is not able to physically ingest any more food, meaning it misses out on the nutrients it needs.

Ideally, ‘scraps’ will be 10-15 per cent of a chicken’s diet. The average hen (eg, a 2kg Brown Shaver or Hyline) will ingest 100-120g of feed a day, bantams about 80g, and an adult heavy breed hen weighing 3kg around 180-200g (although to avoid them getting fat, it’s often good to restrict them to about 160-170g). This means ideally you’d feed out 10-15g of scraps per bird. To give you an idea, a AAA battery weighs 12g and a AA battery weighs 24g so it’s a small amount. Birds which have to eat more total food in an effort to extract the daily amount of protein and energy they need will lay down surplus nutrients as fat, which is detrimental to their health and laying ability.

Scraps and scratch grains are best fed late in the day, just before birds begin to roost. It’s especially useful to them in winter as the energy generated by digesting food overnight helps to keep them warm.