yum.
I know that it looks a little like modern art but this is not atypical chicken food at our house.
One of the reasons that we got chickens in the first place was because it was a great way to get rid of kitchen scraps. I had done a series of articles on how much edible food our family threw away in one month (a little over 20 pounds) and a reader wrote to me telling me that all of her food scraps went to her chickens. Not only did this reader then eat the eggs but she was also not averse to eating a rooster for an occasional Sunday dinner.
It was the ultimate in recycling.
It’s not unusual when we are eating dinner outside to just throw our bits of food garbage over the fence for the chickens to munch on (you have to alternate where you throw so that you don’t accidentally clock a chick over the head with a corncob.) We’ve learned a few things over the years.
- Watermelon rind? Hot damn, the girls will eat it clear down to the skin.
- Not so big on oranges unless we open them up first.
- Apples? LOVE them!
- Onions? Don’t even bother, they’ll just rot and stink up the place.
- Mother’s Day flowers? Yup (put not those blue straw ones)
- Pumpkins? – send invitations, we’re having a party
- Lawn clippings? Yum
- Corn? Salad? You don’t have to call them to the table twice.
Just recently we’ve even started adding leftover meat to the chicken’s food. While we will say no to a forgotten and charred burger, the girls will always excitedly (and graciously) accept it.
This, of course, means that less goes into our compost pile but if the end result is that we get something back which is useful in return for our scraps, it kind of makes it okay.
