What Do Chickens Eat? The Complete Backyard Feeding Guide

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With the cost of eggs skyrocketing, many homeowners are adding backyard chickens for egg production. As you browse the commercial feed aisle in your local feed store, you may be overwhelmed with the choices. Providing a balanced diet for your feathered friends ensures healthy animals that produce nutrient-dense food for your family. But what do you choose? Commercial diets have been developed as a complete feed for chickens, but many people feed chickens so much more! To best feed your chickens at all stages of development, what exactly do chickens eat? 

Natural Diet

While it’s hard to think of chickens as wild birds, domesticated chickens did indeed evolve from wild chickens known as Asian jungle fowl. Like humans, chickens are omnivores. They thrive on a varied diet of plants and meat. Most chicken keepers agree that allowing chickens to free range is the best way to ensure a healthy diet and save money on feed costs. 

In addition to free-ranging, chickens eat a variety of kitchen scraps. Not only does this supplement the nutritional needs of your chickens, but it also reduces waste sent to landfills. 

In past generations, backyard chickens and gardening were encouraged for all families to reduce demand for national food supplies during times of war. Keeping just a few chickens increases your self-sufficiency and is a great way to reduce food costs for your family. 

Commercial Chicken Feed

Commercial chicken feed is designed to provide optimal nutrition at each stage of a chicken’s development. As the chickens mature, their dietary needs change. Flock owners should adjust the grains to best meet the nutritional needs of their chickens.

Grain for Chicks

When you first bring home your flock of day-old chicks, the best commercial grain is chick starter. Chick starters come in a grain size called crumbles. These smaller pieces are easier for the chicks to eat and digest. Chick starter feed comes in two choices, medicated feed or non-medicated. Unlike mammals, which receive colostrum and antibodies from their mothers to boost their immune system. Chicks are more vulnerable to sickness and parasites. Medicated chick starter not only includes the optimal balance of nutrients it’s packed with probiotics and are medicated to prevent coccidiosis in your chicks.

Feeding Chicks

For those uncomfortable feeding their chicks a medicated grain, chick starter comes in a non-medicated crumble as well. In addition to fresh water, it’s a good idea to free-feed your chicks. Ensuring that they have free choice food available to them 24/7. 

Most chick starters are referred to as chick starter/growers. We typically feed a starter/grower until the chicks are large enough to transition to pellets. Chicken pellets are a larger grain of commercial chicken feed. 

Some chicken feed companies do make a grower feed that is designed for non-laying birds. It is fed after your birds have outgrown their need for starter, but are not yet laying eggs. Grower feeds are higher in protein designed to meet the nutritional needs of rapidly growing animals. Keep in mind it will take 5 to 6 months before your chickens will start laying eggs. 

Adult Chickens

While roosters and non-laying hens do have different nutritional needs than egg-laying hens when keeping a mixed flock it is much harder to provide specific grains for each type of bird. As a rule, we feed 16% protein layer pellets to our main chicken flock. Pellets refers to the grain size. While layer feed does come in a crumble, we find that the chickens are less wasteful when eating pellets. Layer feed is higher in calcium, which helps chickens produce eggs with hard shells. 

Some chicken keepers prefer to feed an all-flock commercial grain to mixed flocks and provide calcium supplementation to laying hens by offering oyster shells to their diet. Since laying hens make up the majority of our flock, it’s our personal preference to tailor our feeding program around the needs of the majority. 

Chicken Scratch, Grit, and Oyster Shells

My chickens love chicken scratch! Scratch grains are sometimes mixed with other grains and even grit for added nutrients and to aid digestion. Consider this a healthy snack, not their essential nutrients. When mixed with layer pellets, we found our chickens wasted more feed. They dig through the layer pellets to find the scratch.  It’s best to sprinkle the scratch in an area you want the chickens to scratch up, putting them to work for you! They will dig around, scratching, eating grains, and foraging as they go. 

Insoluble grit is an important part of your chicken’s digestion process. Since chickens don’t have teeth, they swallow food whole which is ground in their gizzard with the help of grit. If your chickens have access to dirt, they likely have all the grit they need. However, if your chickens are in an elevated coop or the ground is snow covered where the birds have no access to sand or dirt, you will need to provide them with grit.  

Oyster shell is a good additive to the diet of your laying hens.  Especially if you notice the eggs are fragile or even soft. The chickens need additional calcium to ensure the eggs have hard shells. 

Feeding Chickens Beyond the Feed Store

While commercial processed chicken feeds are convenient, they can also be expensive. In our current flock, we have almost 60 chickens. During the winter when forage is more scarce, they are eating a 50-pound bag of grain every three days! One of the biggest perks of having a flock of backyard chickens is they act as little garbage disposals. As omnivores, chickens are far less fussy about where their food comes from than you might think. My chickens act like they strike it rich to find a fresh cow patty full of undigested grains. The roosters call the hens over and together they dig through it looking for every tasty morsel! 

Just before we moved to our homestead, we were inspired by a lecture we attended by Beth and Shawn Daugherty. They raise the food needed on their farm to feed their livestock. While most backyard chicken keepers are not committed to such an endeavor, it opened my eyes to the possibility of depending less on the feed store and using what we already have available to feed our animals. According to Beth and Shawn in their pamphlet “Beating the Feed Bill Blues” the food prep and table food scraps of just one person can support one to two chickens. Depending on your family size, the average family of 4 needs only 4 to 6 chickens to provide sufficient eggs for the family. 

​Natural Foods for Your Backyard Chickens

If you are able, allow your chickens to free-range rather than being confined to a chicken coop. Chickens eat a variety of greens, grass clippings, and clover. As they forage for greens, they will scratch through the leaves and grass in your backyard. They are looking for greens and a variety of bugs and even snakes, lizards, and frogs. 

If you keep a garden, chickens love a variety of garden scraps. They will completely clean the skin of a squash or pumpkin. Chickens love garden scraps: strawberry tops, cucumber and carrot peels, blemished tomatoes, and zucchini. Any of the greens you enjoy can be eaten by your chickens. Spinach, wilted lettuce, kale, broccoli, and the outer leaves of cabbage are all great supplements for your chickens. You can even feed your chickens scraps from your bell peppers, both the tops and the seeds. Chickens are not sensitive to the heat of the pepper seeds so they enjoy them like other fruits. 

Even if you don’t keep a garden, you can plant foods like sunflowers in your flower beds to provide sunflower seeds for the chickens. Once the seed heads mature, cut them off and give the entire head to the chickens. 

Protein Sources Chickens Love

Chickens love meat. If you have ever seen a chicken catch a lizard, they will run around as other chickens try to steal their treasured treat. They will eat mice, frogs, and even snakes. 

Meat and fat scraps left from meals and food prep can be added to the chicken scrap bucket.  Toss in the bones from broth making, the chickens will enjoy picking them clean of any scraps left behind. Cooked eggs are another source of protein chickens love. While chickens can eat raw eggs, it’s always best to cook them in a form that the chickens won’t recognize as eggs.  The chickens especially love scrambled eggs but the easiest way to cook them is in the Instapot. I crush them with a potato masher until they no longer look like an egg. The chickens will eat the shells and all! 

Other Protein Sources Chickens Love

Dairy is an excellent protein source for your chickens. Raw milk can be clabbered into a thick yogurt-like milk that the chickens enjoy.  A quart of milk can provide the daily protein needs of 12 to 25 birds. Even if you don’t have access to raw milk, yogurt, sour cream, or moldy cheese are all dairy products that can contribute to your chickens’ nutritional needs. 

An overlooked source of protein for chickens is offal. If you hunt or raise your own meat, the organ meat is extremely nutrient-rich for your chickens. Dice the liver, kidneys, and heart into bite-sized pieces. You can freeze them into small blocks to feed to the chickens throughout the winter when other food sources are more scarce.

I make suet blocks for my chickens using scraps from tallow and lard rendering.  Simply mix the less-than-appetizing leftover fats and cracklings with birdseed or scratch. I freeze these in blocks for the chickens. During the cold winter months when the temperatures dip below freezing, the added fats provide additional calories to activate the chickens’ metabolism and help keep them warm. Additionally, we allow the chickens to clean the carcass of the deer we harvest. They will pick the bones completely clean! 

Providing Natural Foods for Chickens in the Chicken Coop

If you keep your chickens in a chicken run for safety, or to satisfy the neighbors who may not like the chickens free-ranging in their yard, you can still provide natural foods for your chickens. Most of the natural food suggestions would be appropriate whether your chicken’s free range or not. Many people grow fodder for their chickens. Barley and other grains are easily sprouted in trays. When the grains become a few inches tall, feed the tray of sprouted grains to the birds.  The chickens will love the fresh green and even the roots. 

Chickens love grains too, cooked oats or other grains are a tasty treat for chickens confined to the chicken coop.

​Foraging and the Cornish Cross Broilers

If you are raising meat chickens like cornish cross broilers, you will find they need grain.  Cornish cross broilers are a hybrid breed of chickens grown for rapid growth. While they will forage some, especially as they get larger their nutritional needs will not be met the same way as other traditional breeds of chickens through foraging. Broiler chickens are happy to sit in front of the feeder and eat, they don’t enjoy the work and effort needed to forage for their own food.  They are usually harvested at a young age of 6 to 8 weeks.  Birds that are young need protection from predators not conducive to free-ranging.  Not to mention they grow so fast, they are prone to leg and heart problems, and they really aren’t up to the task of supplementing their diets through foraging.

Foods NOT to Feed Your Chickens

While chickens are the garbage disposal of the homestead kitchen, there are foods that you should not feed your chickens. Chickens can have ripe tomatoes or most fruits, but you need to avoid plant material in the nightshades family. They can not have green tomatoes or tomato plants.  Additionally, raw potatoes, onion scraps, and garlic. Additionally, avocados and avocado pits are toxic to chickens. While raw potatoes and potato skins are toxic to chickens, cooked potatoes and potato skins are safe for them to eat. Apple seeds are also said to be toxic to chickens, though I have found an occasional apple core did not cause any problems for my chickens. 

For the same reasons that you may choose not to eat processed food, they are not good for your chickens either.  Junk food high in sugar or salt or that contains chocolate should not be fed to chickens. 

While chickens enjoy many grains, grains that become larger when they absorb water shouldn’t be fed to chickens raw.  Things like rice or beans that are not cooked sufficiently can absorb water causing blockages in your chickens’ digestive system. 

Good Quality Feed for Healthy Chickens

While we are fortunate to have access to quality commercial grains for our chickens, an exclusive diet of commercial grains can get expensive depending on how many chickens you keep. Free-range chickens thrive not only on the foods they can forage but the addition of nutritious vegetables and other food scraps. Not only do chickens provide nutritious eggs for your family, but they can be beneficial to your backyard garden by reducing waste, scratching up the area, and keeping the bug population under control. It’s satisfying to head into the yard and see the chickens come running to enjoy the nutritious treats they have come to enjoy in your care.