My roommates just got chickens, since we all eat eggs, and would rather not buy them. and despite the obvious uncomfortability with domestic animals, i’m stoked to not have to buy eggs. but the question is, does anyone have good advice for a kind chicken master? maybe ways to treat them, things to feed (or not) them? anything else?
Chicken’s are pretty easy to “treat”. Like most animals they are content with a cool place to live, water, and some tasty food. If you’re looking to make pets out of them, they actually make pretty nice pets as well when domesticated.
Food, we usually went for general cracked corn. When we had our old farm we’d harvest and shell it ourselves, but you can buy it at any feed store. You can even buy (albeit more expensive) organic feed. If you just have chickens and no roosters, you’d want laying mash, but that has hormones to help them produce the eggs so it’s a toss up. Personally I’d avoid the hormones.
In the late fall when we slaughter rabbits, the unused portions (mainly the shoulders) we usually toss to the chickens to give them extra protein for the winter months. They love the stuff.
And as a treat, we used to get “unsellable” fruit from the local fruit market to give our chickens and turtles. If you have a fruit market near by that discards the “starting to rot” fruit, I bet they may not mind giving you their scraps to feed to your chickens for a nice treat.
Chickens, like nearly all other domesticated animals, were domesticated in the first place because of their sociability and very… liberal… eating habits. Just think about the steriotypes of goats - will eat anything - and pigs - will eat lots. Doesnt take a lot to make them happy. Though, if you want, you could let them weed your garden for you. 
Dumpster produce
If you find any logs with ants or other insect nests and larvae they will love that.
When we cut wood, if we found logs with carpenter ants in them we would toss them in the chicken pen.
Let the shit accumulate inside the coop a bit more in winter, it will help keep it a little warmer in there.
Give them lots of water and make sure it stays thawed in winter.
Feed the egg shells back to them and give them some oyster shell once in a while to keep good shells on the eggs.
Let them free range as much as you can.
Get a rooster. If he doesn’t do his job, eat him and get one that will. He should lead the hens around and make sure they all get back in the coop at night and he should look after them and protect them. He should also be a good mate. In other words he shouldn’t be rough on the hens. I’ve eaten a few roosters that didn’t know how to mate without getting too rough.
I like chickens. We used to have a bunch. They payed their own way and payed for a few turkeys as well with the eggs we sold.
[quote=“heyvictor, post:4, topic:1188”]Dumpster produce
If you find any logs with ants or other insect nests and larvae they will love that.
When we cut wood, if we found logs with carpenter ants in them we would toss them in the chicken pen.
Let the shit accumulate inside the coop a bit more in winter, it will help keep it a little warmer in there.
Give them lots of water and make sure it stays thawed in winter.
Feed the egg shells back to them and give them some oyster shell once in a while to keep good shells on the eggs.
Let them free range as much as you can.
Get a rooster. If he doesn’t do his job, eat him and get one that will. He should lead the hens around and make sure they all get back in the coop at night and he should look after them and protect them. He should also be a good mate. In other words he shouldn’t be rough on the hens. I’ve eaten a few roosters that didn’t know how to mate without getting too rough.
I like chickens. We used to have a bunch. They payed their own way and payed for a few turkeys as well with the eggs we sold.[/quote]
yeah, so far they seem real excited about the eggshells. as for dumpstered produce, they mostly ignored the tomatoes and carrots, but ate up the greens. they really freaked when i found a half squished worm in the yard and tossed it in there. fortunately for my sleeping habits, we can’t get a rooster, our neighbors would freak (we live right in the middle of the city). as for oyster shell, do you mean just a whole oyster shell i might find on the beach, or do we need to crush it up? do you know anything they shouldn’t eat?
You would want to crush the oyster shell. They peck it up and it goes into their gullet were they use it as grit to “chew” their food. They absorb calcium out of it while it’s in there.
They sell it by the bag at feed stores too. One bag would last a long time for just a few chickens. They don’t need much, especially if they get egg shells and lots of greens, because the greens have calcium too.
Just give them the oyster shell if you notice your egg shells are really thin and weak.
[quote=“heyvictor, post:4, topic:1188”]Dumpster produce
If you find any logs with ants or other insect nests and larvae they will love that.
When we cut wood, if we found logs with carpenter ants in them we would toss them in the chicken pen.
Let the shit accumulate inside the coop a bit more in winter, it will help keep it a little warmer in there.
Give them lots of water and make sure it stays thawed in winter.
Feed the egg shells back to them and give them some oyster shell once in a while to keep good shells on the eggs.
Let them free range as much as you can.
Get a rooster. If he doesn’t do his job, eat him and get one that will. He should lead the hens around and make sure they all get back in the coop at night and he should look after them and protect them. He should also be a good mate. In other words he shouldn’t be rough on the hens. I’ve eaten a few roosters that didn’t know how to mate without getting too rough.
I like chickens. We used to have a bunch. They payed their own way and payed for a few turkeys as well with the eggs we sold.[/quote]
We had a yellow jackets nest that had made it’s way into the ground in our back yard once under a piece of plywood. When we picked up the plywood it picked up the nest with it. It was still early morning so they weren’t very active yet so we put the plywood in with our geese and they tore it up and ate every damn one of them. It was amazing. Guess they enjoyed it 
Mmm, sounds good for geese!
I wonder if insects add any calcium to the birds’ diet?