How to Feed Chickens with Less or No Grain

Feeding chickens doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. They don’t even have to be fed on corn based, store feed at all.

Chickens are omnivores, making it possible to source food for them so much more varied, and readily available. You just need to know where to look.

Chickens aren’t the most grown livestock on the planet for nothing. They are no nonsense, can eat a greater variety of food than almost any other animal and therefore are the most viable animal to keep both for the small and large productions if you can tap a good food source!

Best Ways to Feed Chickens with Less Grain

Here are a few ingenious ways to cut down on feed costs, or to cut money out of the equation entirely. Let’s get into feeding chickens on a budget!

Over and Underfeeding

The truth is most chickens are not being fed the amounts that they actually need. Underfeeding affects laying rates, but so does overfeeding. And we’re not talking about green feed here.

Giving your girls kitchen scraps and garden waste isn’t going to make them chunky around their fluffy butts. They take longer to scratch and tear through the fibrous material, so they just don’t get as much in as they would with ground down, refined corn based feed. And they’re getting a workout while they’re scratching, rooting and kicking over all that leftover salad and vegetable tops anyway.

But the refined feed is just sitting around like a bowl of potato chips waiting to be unnecessarily grazed on putting the chunk in the chunky chicken butt but more importantly slowing down egg production.

Get them on a schedule, instead of keeping their feeders full at all times. The average chicken eats about 2 pounds of standard feed a week, or half a cup a day.

Do the math according to how many you have and feed them accordingly. Your feed cost will go down and your hens will actually be healthier for it if you feed them the correct amount twice a day, without taking away their delicious green treats from the kitchen.

Industrial Waste

Getting your hands on the byproducts of food businesses is cheap, nutritious and there’s more of it being thrown on the landfills unnecessarily than you’d believe.

Breweries have highly nutritious spent grain pulp at the end of every batch of beer. The small, privately owned breweries will probably give it to you for free to save themselves the cost of disposing of it.

The same goes for beet pulp, almond hulls, sunflower stems and leaves and any kind of grain straw after the grain’s been removed. It’s all edible. And not just for chickens, everything we mentioned can be eaten by goats, cows, pigs and sheep.

The almond hulls, sunflower scraps and grain straw might have to be chipped down somewhat for the fowl to be able to eat it, but they are a great source of protein, vitamins and minerals for them.

Scraps

Chickens can’t really overeat on kitchen scraps. Like we mentioned, they’re working while they’re eating, so processing all that green is a little different than simply standing in front of a tray mindlessly pecking at food that doesn't require a little effort to eat.

But the scraps don’t stop at your kitchen. Your neighbors, restaurants and farms all come with ample amounts of food waste that's more trouble to dispose of properly than it is to just give it to you.

The only thing you need to avoid when taking scraps is meat. Chickens and pigs can eat meat, but giving it to them as a food alternative is asking for a parasitic infection or a bacterial disease brewing out.

Meat just rots faster than green matter does, and it decomposes with a completely different set of rules. And yes, you can absolutely feed them back their own eggs if they’ve been laying too much for you to consume. Instead of letting it rot on the counter give them the much needed calcium and protein.

Some say, raw eggs, though perfectly safe for chickens to eat, teaches them to cannibalise their own eggs as soon as they lay them. Some suggest to cook the eggs properly, crush it, shells and all, and they’ll go crazy for it!

Consider other businesses in your area that go through food products in bulk, grocery stores always have product expiring, leave your info so they can give you a call. Pretty much anywhere that has food usually has food waste that can feed your flock.

Fermentation and Buying in Bulk

Buy your feed in bulk. You can save 20 to 30 percent in feed costs every year if you do. And if you’re worried about storing all that feed for the entire year without it being eaten by rodents or spoiling, there are plenty of options to safely store feed for years in advance.

If you’re just feeding a backyard flock you can just vacuum seal it in plastic, add a packet of silica gel to absorb excess moisture and they’ll store comfortably for the whole year.

Then fermenting their breakfast wont just stretch your feed for longer, it’ll make the food more nutritious for them at the same time. Fermentation begins the process of breaking down the grain before they consume it, making the protein, minerals and fibre much more digestible for them. The same holds true for fermented food for humans.

Worm Farms

When we say worm farms, it can mean a lot of different species and methods. Earthworms, maggots and mealworms are all delicious high protein snacks for all of the fowl species.

Maggot farms are pretty disgusting, so it might not be everyone’s cup of tea…Essentially a bucket with some holes at the bottom is hung from the ceiling of the coop. Inside, you place a piece of meat that's allowed to rot and attract all of the flies in the area that’ll lay their eggs in the stinky chop.

As the maggots hatch they fall through the holes, feeding the waiting birds below. The chickens are going to camp out under that bucket all day, just waiting for the next treat to fall down.

Breeding mealworms is much less fragrant, pretty low effort and it only involves minimal interaction from you to keep them breeding and continuously supplying you with worms for the birds.

If that’s still too much contact for you, try earthworms. Earthworm habitats are just buckets filled with sand and all you have to do is to give it some water every now and then and throw some kitchen scraps over the top.

They multiply like crazy and you won't have to even touch them at all during the entire process. Just take a spade and scoop a shovel full of sand, wriggling with worms, straight onto the coop’s floor.

Compost Feeding

Since we’re on the subject of worms and scraps, compost feeding is a very economical way to not only feed your chickens for cheap, but it also cuts out your need for grain based feed completely.

But to put it simply, chickens don't actually need all of that carbohydrate rich grain feed. Humans, pigs and fowl are all omnivores and in the same way that humans do well on a high protein diet, so do all birds. We know bugs and meat contain protein and iron, but it’s high in all of the other nutrients too.

By allowing your hens to feed themselves on a compost heap, they can absolutely fulfil all of their nutritional needs and continue to lay as much as they would on grain based feed, while they’re speeding up the composting process for you to use in the field.

Rotational Grazing

And just as the fowl can live entirely on compost, so can they by grazing. Yes, like cows and sheep, chickens are totally fine on a rotational grazing schedule.

Some farmers say rotational grazing can cut down on as much as 50% of feed due to chickens being able to forage their own graze and grub. This also provides huge soil benefits with the additional nitrogen and grazing impact.

Some say chickens are the most important part of a rotational grazing schedule simply because of the nitrogen impact that ruminants do not have.

Growing It Yourself

If you have space, whether that be an entire field, a backyard patch or even just a few square feet down in the basement, you can grow a lot of chicken food.

Sunflower, alfalfa and amaranth are just a few examples of sprouts that have a good amount of protein and lysine, that most other green sorts lack and are highly nutritious to chickens.  

And if you do have a patch in the backyard to spare you don’t have to grow corn to feed them. Corn just happens to be the most viable high calorie crop that’s grown on a large scale so that’s why it makes up most of our animal feed, but it’s a far cry from being nutritionally perfect.

There are many more grains that can grow closer together, have more nutrients and are more resistant to disease.

As we mentioned before, alfalfa, sunflower and amaranth are high in all of the nutrients any animal needs, they can grow densely together and they are extremely hardy.

Buckwheat, sorghum, teff, millet and rye aren’t far behind and produce enormous amounts of seed heads that store well in the longterm and the birds really do love it.

You might not be able to fit enough in your space to cover their feed entirely, but you’ll make an enormous dent in your expenses with very little effort.

All of the crops we mentioned translate to field crops too. Though most of them, especially millet, teff and amaranth have a habit of throwing down so many seeds that they continue to come up for years to come.

So if you plan on growing your own feed, make sure that you set aside a permanent place just for planting those. Or run your girls through the field in a rotational grazing system, they’ll peck up any seeds that the harvest missed!

Conclusion

You don’t need a whole lot of space to take some strain off your budget, and you don’t need to rely on just one method of sourcing feed either.

Of all of the options on the table, the more of them you utilize, the better it will be for the health and productivity of your chickens.

So why not give those capable ladies the opportunity to feed  themselves by running through your field, tilling it, fertilizing it and making up the difference with what you can grow, produce and source?

They’ll be happy, healthy and they'll give you more eggs and juicy Sunday roasts for your kindness than you know what to do with.

And if you’re here because you were worried about the cost of keeping a flock of your own, with all of the ways to keep them fed, almost all you have to do is to buy the materials you need to build them a coop. The rest doesn’t have to burn a hole in your pocket if you don't want it to.