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.