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.