A well fed chook is a happy chook. And a happy chook is a healthy chook. Healthy, happy chooks lay more eggs. Understanding the role of good nutrition and ensuring your little backyard flock is fed a balanced diet is the single most important thing you can do to keep your hens healthy. A good diet, together with the provision of a natural environment, will go a very long way to avoiding poultry health problems entirely.

Back in the day, about fifty years ago, when just about every household kept a few chooks, everyone knew exactly how to feed them. Or thought they did. Every home kept a smelly container under the sink — the chook bucket — into which all that day’s food scraps were thrown, from raw potato peelings up to and including the tea leaves.

Once a day the malodorous contents would be tossed to the hens. Maybe a bit of pollard mixed with water or, sometimes, skim milk, might be added. If they were lucky the hens would dine a la carte, from a trough. Mostly, people just chucked the sloppy mess on the ground and left the birds to fend for themselves. In the evening the flock would fight over a few handfuls of wheat scattered in the run. The really lucky ones, those that lived out of town, were able to get out of the henhouse and forage for a bit extra during the day.

There were almost no bags of balanced mash or pellet feeds available back then. Even if there were most people would have disdained their use, and the cost. It all sounds a bit inadequate, and it was, yet many people still look back on those days convinced that the little flock of hens they grew up feeding in this hit and miss manner were healthier, happier and laid tastier eggs than today’s pampered backyard chooks.

The reality is that they weren’t, and they didn’t. Lay tastier eggs that is. Backyard poultry were frequently underfed, suffered from dietary deficiencies and all the health problems that go with them.They were usually scrawny meat birds that laid fewer, smaller, eggs and had much shorter lives. Chooks were cheap and people didn’t expect too much from them.

There’s nothing wrong with feeding scraps to your chooks, they can play a valuable role as an addition to a balanced diet, but not as a sole source of food. And no raw potato peelings or tea leaves!

Things are different today. Not only do we have a far better understanding of the importance of diet and environment in promoting good animal health, the backyard poultry keeper has a wide range of affordable proprietary feeds available to them — pre-mixed mashes, crumbles and pelleted feeds, most containing the added vitamins and minerals needed to keep a chook well fed and healthy. And of course we still have the all important grains, including the ever dependable wheat.

Mash is basically whole grains crushed and chopped up small. Pellets are mash in a compressed ‘tablet’ form. Pellets are convenient for you but the birds eat them very quickly, which is undesirable for a number of reasons, and they can take a while to digest.

Mash is more flexible. You can feed it dry or mix it with water, milk or boiled up house scraps. It takes longer for the hens to eat so has a certain entertainment value. That extra time also comes a little closer to the bird’s natural feeding behaviour, which can help avoid cannibalism in your flock.

Most of these ‘ready-to-eat’ feeds are very good, although some are better than others. It’s generally a case of you get what you pay for. For those concerned about the feeds which add hormones to the mix, or are produced using chemically sprayed crops there are organic and ‘natural’ feeds available with few or no additives. But don’t be too concerned about added protein or vitamins and minerals such as sodium and phosphorous. Most backyard flocks need these ‘extras’ to stay healthy.

If you opt to feed a proprietary mix as your sole food source the first thing to decide is just how you are going to serve dinner. Providing you have a vermin- and bird-proof house and run, a hopper is the easiest way to provide a permanent, on-demand supply of dry food.

There are various types of hoppers and ad lib feeders available. The best let the food flow readily into the feed tray without it overflowing onto the floor. But remember, if your fowls are allowed out of their house during the day you have to be able to close off the feeder hopper to prevent birds, mice and other pests pigging out while the doors are open. Shutting the doors would mean the hens can’t get access to their nests to lay, and they’ll relish any excuse to lay away.

To foil these opportunistic pests there are feeder designs that stay closed until triggered by a fowl’s weight on a platform, which raises the lid to allow access to the food.

Whatever design of feeder you choose make sure the chooks can’t perch on top of or above it. Not only will they foul the feed tray but you will have to clean the lid of chook poo every time you need to fill it. A steeply sloping cover solves the problem.

If you don’t have a bird-proof house then the feed, whether dry pellets or moistened mash, should be fed in troughs early in the morning. Ideally, you would repeat this several times a day, removing the troughs when the flock has finished eating. Make sure all your fowls have had enough to eat before you remove the leftovers. Remember the chook pecking order — those at the bottom have to wait until the dominant members of the flock are finished before they can start. If there’s anything left for them. It’s up to you to ensure that these weaker, more timid, members of the flock get enough food.

Simple, V-shaped troughs are more than adequate, but put a couple of small drain holes in the bottom — just in case it rains.

How much feed does a hen need? There are no hard and fast rules. Laying birds are unlikely to overeat and it’s important they get all they need if they are to lay to potential. At the same time, any uneaten food will go stale and attract birds, rats and dogs so it’s best to put out roughly the right quantities to begin with.

If your birds get mash or pellets and little else, start by offering about 100 to 120 grams per bird per day for the lighter breeds, less than that for bantams — around 80 grams. For heavy breeds Increase this to about 180 grams per bird. If a cup of flour weighs about 100 grams, you are looking at a little over a cupful of mash a day for the lighter breeds and nearly two cups each for heavy breeds or your meat birds.

How often should you feed? From the bird’s point of view the optimum is two to three feeds a day. If you have six chooks they would enjoy a couple of cups of mash in the morning, at noon and again at night.

Most of us don’t have the time to spend all day trudging down to the hen house and back, although if you can find the time, it’s therapeutic to sit and watch the chooks feed. If you’re too busy, try the time honoured method of employing junior poultry managers — send the kids down to do the job before and after school. That leaves one feed for you to do at noon.

Three feeds a day is often just not possible, so cut it to two — morning and night. Too busy in the morning? Chooks will adjust to one feed a day, but it’s far from ideal. In this situation use an ad lib feeder so they can peck at mash or pellets whenever they like.

Water is also critical. Laying hens will drink up to 500 ml a day and if they run short will be stressed and could go off the lay. Make sure their water supply is always full, always fresh and keep water bowls where hens cannot foul the water with droppings and dirt. Keep it just outside the house where hens can poke their head through to drink. You don’t want a water bowl inside the henhouse. Too much water dropped on a deep litter floor will make it damp and encourage bacteria and disease.

In theory a good all-purpose food plus plenty of fresh, clean water is all your birds need to remain healthy. But mash and pellets are no more than a bare bones diet. Birds must be able to perform economically on it or all the commercial egg farms would go out of business. Still, most of those who keep chooks today like to think our fowls live really happy, healthy and well balanced lives. There’s no doubt they do better and enjoy life more with some supplements for variety. And we have the time and resources to offer that little bit extra. So keep that traditional kitchen scrap bucket. All those vege peelings can be cooked up and added to the mash.

If you have fruit trees, come preserving time there will be masses of delicious skins and seeds. Add a bit of milk to mix the mash. Stale bread, left over mashed potato … you name it, chooks will eat it.

A word of caution though. Don’t make radical, abrupt changes to an established feeding regime. If you are going to give them milk, start with just a little for a week. If the vege garden starts producing heaps of pumpkins, don’t suddenly ask your hens to eat boiled pumpkin and nothing else. Introduce anything new gradually.

Don’t reduce grain rations unless you are sure the extras you are offering are as balanced and will complete the meal, or feed the hard rations first — it’s these that will produce the eggs. Scraps will be appreciated as after dinner treats but are not nearly as nutritious as hard feeds.

The most ‘natural’ way to add supplements to the diet of your flock is by allowing them adequate free range in an appropriate, resource-rich environment. Bringing the supplements and extras to the chooks may be less work for you, and require less in the way of ‘infrastructure,’ but free range activity does a lot more than provide a source of dietary supplements, or a way to clean up the pests in the vege garden.

In the right environment, free range foraging provides huge benefits for the overall health of your flock. Not only do they pick up a lot of vitamins, additional protein (from bugs mostly) and necessary supplements like grit, they get a lot of benefit from the exercise and the time spent in the sun. A hen with regular free range access to good sized plant- and litter-rich areas will have stronger musculature, produce stronger-shelled eggs, and generally be far more resistant to disease.

Importantly, they’ll also be more content and less prone to behavioural problems. There may be the odd squabble over a particularly juicy bug but these will rarely develop into full scale fights, which can lead to injuries and, sometimes, to more serious issues. While it is not always possible to provide a large run containing lots of plant material and insect-rich soil, the more you can get your hens out into the open and allow them to express their natural behaviour the healthier they are likely to be.

So, what should you be providing as supplementary feed? For most backyard flocks the best source of health-giving extras is the vege garden. Ideally you want to fence it so you can allow your chooks in at appropriate times — to clean up after a crop has been harvested — and keep them out when you want to protect your crops from their marauding ways.

The vege garden is also an ideal way to grow your own chook feed. The trick is working out what combination will be best to give your flock the balanced diet they need. Basically, chooks need water, carbohydrates, protein and fats, minerals and vitamins. Much the same as us really.

Grains are the best hard food and there is no secret to growing wheat, barley and oats, or pulses like lentils and chick peas. Choose which grains suit you and the local climate best. But don’t feed green or immature wheat, it must be well ripened — the proverbial golden grain. Corn and wheat are both high in carbohydrates so are especially good for fattening birds for the table or keeping them warm during winter.

Most vege gardens will include some peas, beans, corn, and maybe sunflowers. Chooks love sunflower seeds. Just plant a heap more of these crops than you need for your own family, and keep the surplus for the chooks. Organise some cool, dry storage to make it last through the year.

Protein can be either vegetable or animal. It is usually the more expensive part of a feed and there is no point overdoing it — any excess will simply pass through and end up fertilising the ground anyway.

Laying hens need about 16 per cent protein in their diet to lay to potential. If your feed is of poorer quality the chooks have to eat more to get the protein they need or their productivity will suffer.

Protein can be supplied by adding meat and bone meal or skim milk powder to the feed, or mixing feed with milk. Birds on a free range regime will meet some of their protein needs with the bugs, slugs and worms they scratch up, but not all of it.

Commercial feeds often contain added minerals and vitamins, and synthetic mixes are also available, but free range birds can get most of their needs from foraging, as long as you have the right plants growing for them to pick through.

Comfrey is a terrific plant for chooks (and for enriching the vege garden). A good, deep rooted plant rich in minerals, plant comfrey where it can poke its leaves through the fence into the chook run and they will peck at it as they need it.

The brassicas — broccoli, cabbage and caulis — are also good, but don’t expect chooks to eat too much raw cabbage or other stringy greens. They can leave them with a mass of undigested fibre sitting in their crop.

Silverbeet, lucerne, the outside leaves of lettuce, even lawn clippings will be appreciated, as will a lot of weeds — sow thistle, shepherds purse, lotus, dandelions, plantains, nettles, twitch, oxalis and onion weed to name a few. If you are not using moveable arks and your permanent chook run is a decent size it’s the one place you can happily let run to weed.

One of the most important feed ingredients is calcium. All those egg shells have to come from somewhere. If your hens are not getting adequate calcium they will either go off the lay, produce soft shelled eggs or rob their own bodies of calcium supplies.

Avoid this by making sure they get bone meal, or add lime direct to their meal, about 1 per cent by weight. Or give them plenty of shell grit. Besides supplying calcium, grit is the grindstone the chooks need in their crops to help digest all those grains and lumpy bits. They will seek it out after eating so keep a container of grit next to the feeder. Ground up shell is the simplest. Failing sea shells, crush egg shells beyond recognition and feed those back to the hens. If you supply calcium in other forms the chooks may settle for small pebbles or coarse sand as grit.

That takes care of basic needs, but there are lots of treats you can offer to excite the chook palate. If your chook run is movable, keep it in the orchard so they can enjoy the windfalls. If the house is permanent, plant some grape vines over the netting. It provides shade in summer and grapes in autumn.

If you keep ducks instead of chooks, or both, note that while ducks enjoy many of the same foods there are a few differences. They prefer their feed wet so mix mash with plenty of water or milk. They also need more protein than hens, at least 20 per cent protein as a minimum.

Ducks are more creatures of habit than chooks and like a regular routine. If you want to collect eggs, the simplest system is to let them out to forage during the day, call them home about three or four pm with a good feed of mash and scraps and shut them in their pen. Give them a wet mash meal as early as possible the next morning. They should have laid their eggs by nine am and you can let them out again.

Ducks love a stream or pond to swim in but it isn’t vital as long as they have access to good clean water at all times. Just make sure their water bowl is big enough and deep enough for them to get their whole faces in for a good wash.

Like chooks, ducks need plenty of fresh greens but they are excellent foragers and will take care of most of their own requirements if you let them out of their pen onto good pasture every day. They cannot cope with dry mature grass so keep the forage area tender and sweet for them by running a lawn mower over it occasionally. If the birds are penned permanently be sure to bring them a daily selection of fresh greens. Don’t just toss greens into the run, where they’ll wilt and dry out, chop them into small pieces and add them to the drinking water. Your ducks will have fun all day fishing them out.

Whatever feathered fowl you choose to make part of your family, remember that you can learn best from the birds themselves. Watch what foods they scramble for, observe when they lay best and what they were eating at the time. Watch for changes in their feathers when their diet alters.

And remember the pecking order. Sometimes younger birds are bossed away from the trough and have to survive on what falls to the ground. Eventually they will starve unless you feed them separately or put out enough feed to ensure everyone gets their fill.

If you are new to keeping poultry and you practice just some of the tips in this article you will have healthy, happy and contented chooks — and will rarely if ever need to call in the vet.