{"id":737,"date":"2009-05-13T08:23:07","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T08:23:07","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-05-13T08:23:07","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T08:23:07","slug":"feeding-random-stuff-to-chickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/feeding-random-stuff-to-chickens\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeding Random Stuff to Chickens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, so someone has given you some exotic ingredient you&#8217;ve never heard of, like okra tofu, or banana seeds, or worm legs. Should you feed it to the chickens, and, if so, how?<\/p>\n<p>The general rule for feeding miscellaneous stuff to chickens is to feed it in a separate feeder, while continuing to give them all the ordinary chicken feed they want. The chickens are pretty bored with the same old chicken feed and are sure to take an interest in anything new. They&#8217;ll eat as much as they want.<\/p>\n<p>The trick is to avoid trying to make them eat more. Chickens are quite good at figuring out whether feed is good or bad, and how much is good for them. In fact, they&#8217;re better than you. So never starve them in order to make them finish off their yummy dish of politician&#8217;s hearts. Just take away what they don&#8217;t eat.<\/p>\n<p>Try to feed them only what they&#8217;ll clean up in a short time &#8212; 20 minutes is traditional. In particular, don&#8217;t let things that are capable of spoiling sit out to grow bacteria and mold, or attract flies and rats. The refrigerator is your friend. Use it to store the excess, rather than setting out too much.<\/p>\n<p>You can also do it the hard way by looking up the foodstuff in question in a poultry nutrition reference. My favorite is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nortoncreekpres.com\/feeding_poultry.html\">Feeding Poultry<\/a> by F. G. Heuser, which is one of the old poultry books that I brought back into print. It doesn&#8217;t have an entry for politician&#8217;s hearts, but it does list some pretty bizarre stuff, like whale meal (page 170) or silkworm chrysalis flour (page 173). The mind boggles. But you&#8217;ll still want to use the &#8220;try it and see&#8221; technique with a new ingredient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, so someone has given you some exotic ingredient you&#8217;ve never heard of, like okra tofu, or banana seeds, or worm legs. Should you feed it to the chickens, and, if so, how? The general rule for feeding miscellaneous stuff to chickens is to feed it in a separate feeder, while continuing to give them &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/feeding-random-stuff-to-chickens\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Feeding Random Stuff to Chickens&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[225],"tags":[51,179],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chickenspoultry","tag-chcken-feed","tag-self-sufficiency"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Feeding Random Stuff to Chickens - Robert Plamondon&#039;s Rural Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/feeding-random-stuff-to-chickens\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Feeding Random Stuff to Chickens - Robert Plamondon&#039;s Rural Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Okay, so someone has given you some exotic ingredient you&#8217;ve never heard of, like okra tofu, or banana seeds, or worm legs. 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A few neighbors see my flock of chickens as a handy way to ensure that nothing goes to waste, without having to actually eat over-ripe or oversized produce. Feeding scraps to your\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chickens\/Poultry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chickens\/Poultry","link":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/category\/chickenspoultry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":697,"url":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/feeding-chickens-cafeteria-style\/","url_meta":{"origin":737,"position":1},"title":"Feeding Chickens, Cafeteria-Style","author":"Robert Plamondon","date":"March 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Back before people had nutritional science figured out, the key to success was to let livestock (and people) pick and choose from a wide variety of foodstuffs. Confined animals (and people) fared poorly. Sailors suffered from scurvy at sea, and people in institutions suffered from pellagra, but the same people\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chickens\/Poultry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chickens\/Poultry","link":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/category\/chickenspoultry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":974,"url":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/scratch-feed-chickens\/","url_meta":{"origin":737,"position":2},"title":"Scratch Feed for Chickens","author":"Robert Plamondon","date":"August 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"What is scratch feed, anyway? Scratch feed is both a feeding method and a type of feed: Scratch feed as a feeding method: It's scratch feed if you feed it by scattering it on the ground (hens reveal morsels of feed and move it around by scratching at it with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chickens\/Poultry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chickens\/Poultry","link":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/category\/chickenspoultry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"feeding_poultry_scratch_feed_250","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/feeding_poultry_scratch_feed_250.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":641,"url":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/save-money-on-chicken-feed\/","url_meta":{"origin":737,"position":3},"title":"Save Money on Chicken Feed","author":"Robert Plamondon","date":"September 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"How can you save money on chicken feed? Here are a few time-tested methods. Can My Chickens Find All Their Feed Themselves? Not really. In the old days, farms and kitchens were so wasteful, with so much grain spilled by the horses and milk cows, and so much garbage thrown\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chickens\/Poultry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chickens\/Poultry","link":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/category\/chickenspoultry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Two feeders are better than one","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/colony2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":838,"url":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/why-chicken-feed\/","url_meta":{"origin":737,"position":4},"title":"Why Chicken Feed?","author":"Robert Plamondon","date":"August 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"People often ask me if chickens on free range need to be fed, or can they get what they need by foraging? And if they do need feeding, what kind of feed to they need? Just grain, or what? In the old days, when people in town threw their garbage\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chickens\/Poultry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chickens\/Poultry","link":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/category\/chickenspoultry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1707,"url":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/faq-chicken-feeding-tips\/","url_meta":{"origin":737,"position":5},"title":"FAQ: Chicken Feeding Tips","author":"Robert Plamondon","date":"November 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are my most reliable tips on feeding your chickens: feeding them simply, feeding them cheaply, and feeding them well. 1. How Can I Save Money on Chicken Feed? Here are some tips: Avoid \"cheapskate feeds.\" There are a lot of cheapskates out there who don't care about quality. Most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chicken FAQ&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chicken FAQ","link":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/category\/chicken-faq\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Girl feeding free-range chickens by hand","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/beth_feeding_small_barred_rock_pullets.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}