Earlier this summer, due to some unexpected circumstances, my feed budget was nearly non-existent.

I needed to stretch the bagged chicken feed in the shed as far as I could. This made me realize that I've been lazy lately: I've been relying on the feed store to feed my chickens instead of using the resources we have here on the homestead.

So, after facing the fact that I've been lazy, I looked up the notes I'd made in past years and reinstalled some practices that I'd let drop by the wayside.


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If you're in the same financial boat - or if you want to avoid being called lazy - here are more than six ways you can save money on chicken feed. Most of these are FREE!

The cheapest way to feed chickens is to let them free-range. They'll eat up all the fleas, ticks, grasshoppers and other bugs within pecking distance, as well as weeds and grass. (They'll also eat your garden produce, so fence them out of the garden.)

But we have to keep our chickens confined due to the large number of predators in our area, so they can't free range and forage their own food. In other words, I have to forage it for them.

Related Post: Keep Your Chickens Safe from Predators

Food Scraps

This is the one practice I have been using all along. I divide our kitchen waste into "what the chickens like" and "what the chickens shouldn't/won't eat" containers.

The second container - the one that holds the "shouldn't/won't eat" stuff - goes to the compost pile. Chickens will eat almost anything, but I don't give them coffee grounds, tea bags, banana peels and so on that I know they won't or shouldn't eat.

They'll even eat things that shouldn't go in the compost pile, like meat scraps. Give them a plate full of bones and they'll pick off every speck of meat.

Surplus eggs are scrambled and fed back to the chickens. They don't mind if the eggs have been in the refrigerator for awhile.

I've always washed and saved eggshells, let them dry out and then powder them in the blender. I give this great source of calcium back to the hens instead of buying oyster shells.

Weeds and Plants

Any weeds I pull in the garden or yard are given to the chickens and the goats. I'm pulling weeds anyway, so it's free food for them.

In the fall I gather seed stalks from weeds such as curly dock and seedheads from the wild sunflowers for the hens.

Bugs

I discovered this one by accident a few years ago when I left a bucket with some water in it near the front door. The night-time bugs that are drawn to the porch light fall into the water in the bucket; in the morning I pour it all into a depression in the chickens' run. They love "bobbing for bugs" and chasing the ones that escape.

Of course any garden pests I pull off my plants (like those ugly tomato hornworms) go to the chickens too.

Maggots

This one is a bit gross, but most of my homesteading "job" is manure management so it doesn't bother me much. I shovel some fresh horse manure into a bucket and leave it for a day or so without a lid, but in a place where it won't collect rainwater.

Of course this bucket draws flies, which lay their eggs inside. After a few more days I dump the bucket in the chicken run. The chickens love scratching through the contents searching for maggots, other bugs and undigested seeds.

If my chickens did free range, they'd be doing this on their own anyway: chickens are omnivores, not vegetarians. This is the article that inspired me to give this a try a few years ago, from The Deliberate Agrarian.

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Fermenting chicken feed

Not quite free, but it stretches the feed I buy a bit farther. Fermenting the feed takes a few more days, but it makes the nutrients more available to the hens. This post on fermenting layer feed from Murano Chicken Farm tells you how to do it.

Sprouting scratch feed

I fill my bird feeders with scratch feed instead of pricey wild bird seed, so I also sprout some of the scratch in a half-gallon jar just like we'd sprout certain seeds for human consumption. The cracked corn won't sprout of course, but the other seeds do, giving the girls more nutrients as well as more bulk feed.

Use What's Cheap or Free

I've broken open pumpkins that I scored at a bargain price after Halloween; my chickens pick those clean. I've also sprouted the pumpkin seeds inside (sometimes by accident).

One year we were given bucketfuls of turnips by a neighbor; I chopped up a few of those for the hens each day.

My chickens love canning season. They know that white bucket I'm carrying is full of seeds, apple peels, tomato skins, etc. I also give them the damaged apples and plums that fall from our trees.

Gardening for Your Chickens 

This is a bit like foraging wild plants or pulling garden weeds for my chickens, but instead the plants are grown intentionally.

Perhaps you only have room to grow just a couple of extra plants for your chickens, or maybe you could devote an entire raised bed or a couple of garden rows to growing produce for your birds. From tender greens to tomatoes, and corn to melons, chickens love garden goodies.

If you'd like to learn more about gardening for and with chickens, check out Lisa Steele's book Gardening with Chickens: Plans and Plants for You and Your Hens.