I give my 10 girls a treat of 2 cups of black soldier fly larvae every day. I don't really think of it as treat because it's so good for them! BUT..THEY think it's a treat! I just toss it on the ground and they scratch for hours making sure they get every last one!!
I don’t give my eight girls scratch. I give them a handful and a half of Garden Delight snacks in each of their food pails. I also treat them with squash, table scraps occasionally and the other day I gave them an apple. I recently hung a ball of lettuce for them. They loved it. I am always trying new things. Soon I will bust up the pumpkins and feed the pumpkins to the chickens. I also give them mealy worms sometimes.
What's a good main feed? We have layer pellets they barely eat. Partly I'm sure because hubby learned (well we did) first from his 2 uncles with chickens who mostly feed scratch 🤦🏼♀️ (im learning!) I have informed hubby (I feed most of the week so I've made a bit of change to the feeding) that scratch shouldn't be the main feed. They still get too much I know now! Which brings me to my 2nd question: how can I switch them to a better main feed and way less scratch?? They are free range. And I'd LOVE to use scratch only as needed for training like to come to me n such. Lol.
My ladies don't really like the pellets either...UNLESS... Every day, after I'm done feeding them, I scoop out a new load of pellets, put it in their pail and add just enough water to soak up all the pellets. They devour it the next day! I repeat this every day right after I feed them so it's ready to go the next day.
Saying chicken scratch is akin to fast food is so misleading. Just because it doesn't have the soy protein amount added, it's basically the same things in every bag of feed. Scratch plus free ranging is more than enough to take care of bird's protein value. One juicy grub will replace whatever is lacking. I prefer my girls get more natural feed.
