Growing Your Own Urban Chicken Feed

Flickr photo credit: MrsEds

One of the benefits to raising urban chickens is their willingness to eat just about any food scraps tossed their way and turning that food into delicious eggs.

A quick "chicken feed" search of YouTube videos shows all kinds of variety in what we're feeding our backyard girls: Army Worms, redworms, herbs, special grain grasses, home-milled seeds and grains. Vegetable trash from the local coop grocery, brewery waste, and many others make the list, too.

While commercially produced feeds are available to us urban chicken farmers, the girls seem to do better when they're eating more than what comes from the bag. But is this really good for our chooks?

I've been talking with a formally trained Ag Professional named Jim Ehle who's doing research into how urban chicken farmers are supplementing commercial rations with other fed options. If you supplement commercially produced feed (or skip it altogether) for your urban chickens, Jim would like to hear from you via email. Specifically, what are you feeding them, and is it good for them?

Of course, I'm always happy to have folks share their wisdom here in the comments, and Jim offers to identify and make reference to all that respond if he uses their information in his report/white paper. Also, he will provide a link to your blog, business, or website as a way to say thanks for providing your experiences.

Thank you in advance for sharing your urban chicken feed experiences!