Treats to Crow About
Fall and winter can be times of boredom for cooped-up birds, so provide them with a little “cheep” entertainment.
Chickens can be an absolute blast to observe. Toss a few worms out and watch them dance! Although chickens will eat just about anything, you need to watch what gets thrown into the scrap bucket. Some things you might want to share with them can be harmful and even deadly. In this article, we’ll be checking out a few foods that are safe to share, some to avoid and a couple of fun treat ideas you can put together to entertain your flock as well!
PULLING HEN’S TEETH
You might have heard the expression “like pulling hen’s teeth,” which refers to something being impossible to do. Chickens don’t have any teeth; rather, they simply consume their food whole and use their tongue to help push it to the back of their throat. Because of their lack of teeth (and swallowing the food whole), chickens need small rocks or gravel in their gizzards to help break up the food. After the food is eventually ground up, it can pass on through the rest of the digestive system.
Before you start giving your chickens extra treats or table scraps, make sure you’ve worked out a properly balanced feeding plan for them. Their needs will vary depending on their age, kind of chicken (layer, fryer, etc.) and environment. Once you’ve made sure they have a regularly balanced diet, you can start to supplement and add a few extra treats in every now and then.
As the seasons change, so can your treat-feeding habits. During the winter, it’s good to focus on high-energy food that will keep your birds busy and warm. When summer rolls around, look for treats that are higher in water content to help keep them hydrated.
During the hot summer days, it’s fun to make a few frozen fruit cups for your birds. They can be a mixture of leftovers from your fridge or expired produce from a local farm stand.
Call around at the end of the growing season and see if anyone is getting ready to dispose of leftover fruit or vegetables. I once got several 5-gallon buckets full of cantaloupes from a local farmer, simply by making a phone call.
TABLE SCRAPS
Animals are fairly intelligent in not eating things that are harmful to them, but we should still be cautious and avoid throwing out something toxic. If you’re rummaging through the fridge, remember that leftover apples or pears can be sliced up and shared with your flock. Bananas or other fruits with a peel should be peeled and then fed. Leftover strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc. make great options to scatter around at snack time, too!
After a cookout or summer BBQ, don’t let the watermelon rinds be tossed in with the rest of the trash. Set out a 5-gallon bucket to collect them and feed to the chickens later. (The best ones are the rinds with a little pink left on them!) The same kind of recycling can take place in the fall when people are beginning to discard their pumpkins or jack-o-lanterns. If they haven’t been covered in glitter, paint or anything else, ask around your neighborhood for any leftovers. Birds will enjoy this festive treat.
Another fun snack for your hens is the occasional handful of popcorn. Just make sure it’s unsalted and left plain before sharing any with them, as too much salt can be damaging. If you happen to have some raisins close by, feel free to scatter some of them around too as hens will love the extra little bite of something sweet!
What about kitchen scraps that should be avoided? Rhubarb is something you should never feed your hens as it contains the toxin oxalic acid in the leaves. If you have this growing nearby your chicken’s roaming area, try putting a sturdy cage over it covered with chicken wire. You don’t need to banish the plant from your farm, just give it some special protection.
Onions and avocados are two more things to avoid feeding your flock. Onions are thought to cause a weird taste in eggs, and avocados contain the toxin persin in their pits and skins. While the flesh of the avocado might be safe for chickens, I would rather just play it safe and avoid feeding avocados entirely.
A CHICKEN FRIENDLY GARDEN
So what about some greenery from the garden? Lettuce for your birds doesn’t just have to come from the bottom of the bag in the fridge. If you raise a garden, make it a point to plant some chicken-friendly scratch greens. This could be a blend of lettuce (any
kind), spinach or kale. If cooked before feeding, chickens can also have green beans from your garden. (Avoid feeding your flock any dried beans though, as they can cause serious health issues and even death.)
You can also create a garden that allows for your birds to free-range directly in the patch. All you need to do is have the coop situated next to the garden plot, erect fencing around the garden to keep them inside (unless your birds can free-range anywhere they please), and be careful to plant only chicken-friendly plants. Besides a large plot of scratch greens, you can also raise fresh peas, carrots or beets, as chickens will love their green tops.
If you’d like to have a garden you and your birds can enjoy, one thing that will help is to let them out of the coop later in the day. Allow for an hour or so of roaming time — just enough that they can scratch and peck around the dirt or greenery but not destroy entire plants. This way, you both will have a chance to get something from the garden!
Unfortunately, though, if a chicken decides it greatly enjoys a particular plant, they can be pretty destructive. It’s best to either not get too attached to anything in your garden or make sure you put a chicken-proof barrier around the particular plant you want to save. A sturdy tomato cage wrapped in chicken wire could be a great way to keep out those pesky beaks!
As you incorporate plants in your garden and landscaping, remember to watch out for ones that are considered toxic. In the garden, these would include any plant deemed a nightshade, meaning that it contains solanine. This includes tomato plants, peppers, eggplants and potatoes (peels and unripe, green potatoes). Both ripe, red tomatoes and peeled, cooked potatoes are fine to feed chickens, though.
CABBAGE ON A HOOK
This has become a fairly popular idea to treat your chickens to. Awhile back, I decided to conduct a little experiment with a head of iceberg lettuce and a cabbage to see which the chickens preferred. Gathering the supplies, I carefully twisted an eyehook into the bottom of each head. There was no need to make it too complicated with predrilling a hole or measuring the twine. The hook screwed in nicely and seemed especially solid in the head of cabbage. I took some old baling twine that had been lying around and eyeballed a nice length to hang the heads at from the top of an old clothesline pole.
The clothesline runs right next to the garden and chicken coop, where a majority of the birds like to waste the summer days away. Decades-old lilac bushes fill the fenced-in run as chicks and other poultry playfully dart around the pen. A fluffy, golden-colored Buff Rock hen has dutifully taken on the role of mother to seven, black little jellybeans. Rouen ducklings scuttle around her as she comes over to investigate near where the lettuce and cabbage have been hung.
Once the discovery was made that there was something cool and delicious at hand, she began clucking in her motherly voice and the ducklings popped up around her feet. She pecked off a piece or two and the lettuce fell to the ground. Before long, a whole group of hens had gathered around and even a stray turkey or two. The lettuce hung, haphazardly getting pecked to shreds, while the cabbage nearby didn’t get a second glance.
Awhile later that day, I went back out to see the progress that had been made. The lettuce was now just a small clump and lying on the ground while the cabbage showed just one hole in a leaf. If we decide to give them this treat again at some point, the choice offering certainly won’t be a head of cabbage!
FROZEN TOMATO + CUCUMBER CUPS
The next project we undertook was to make some frozen little cups of fresh tomatoes and cucumber for the poultry. I gently rinsed a fresh cucumber and five Roma tomatoes under a cool faucet. Taking the ’cuke in hand, it was sliced lengthwise and then chopped into small pieces, as were the tomatoes. After gently stirring them together, I spooned them into a muffin tin until just level full and then filled each muffin cup with water just to under the brim. Set flat in the freezer until frozen solid, we waited patiently to share them with our feathered friends.
Later that afternoon, the cups were frozen, and we headed outside to see what the birds thought of them. The previously mentioned cabbage was found still fairly intact, the lettuce had been eaten almost to the core and the chickens were game for another food tasting. I tossed a frozen veggie cup out to the girls and the excitement began. Soon, hens were running and pecking, ducklings were dabbling; even the geese were questioning what they were missing out on.
As easy as these were, they’d be a great option to make again. You can also mix it up, and try an assortment of berries or other fruit in them as well. Just fill them level with fruit, top it off with water and freeze. This is a great way to get some extra fluid in your birds during a hot season.
FRESHLY DUG EARTHWORMS
Another treat that is simple enough it might be overlooked (and even free, depending on where you live) are freshly dug earthworms. You can even delegate this job to the kids if they’re bored and looking for something to do outside.
It’s a very easy task, just find a few rocks to turn over and then take a small trowel and dig a little. If this doesn’t turn any little wigglers up, pour some water over a shady area of soil, wait an hour or so, and then start digging. If there is a stream or pond nearby, go work up an area of soil on the bank near it. Gather up the wriggling creatures and then share them with your grateful hens. (This is even more fun for them if you dig in their pen or nearby so they can peck and scratch at the dirt as you turn it up!)
The longer you’re a chicken-keeper, the more you’ll learn about what works to feed your flock and what doesn’t. Just so long as you keep an eye out for anything that could be harmful, experiment a little and see what they enjoy the most. If you get a little extra time and want to design an entire garden just for your chickens, send us a picture! I’d love to see your poultry-paradise.
Ashleigh Krispense lives in central Kansas with her husband, Kolton, and their menagerie of critters. She enjoys writing, baking, gardening and spending time with her husband on the farm. To follow along with her life as a farm wife, check out her blog, Prairie Gal Cookin’.