What are your chickens favourite treats?

[RinkyTinkTen]

So we got chickens (point of layers) on Tuesday! They're very sweet, 1 Sussex, 1 Sussex reverse, 1 Speckledy and 1 Bluebell. They're eating the feed & corn fine, but haven't been interested in any tears at all. So far I've tried strawberry bits, raisins, potato peelings & carrot peelings and they've pecked at them, but then pretty much ignored it all! Shall I persevere and see if they develop a taste for something or not really other?

What are your girls favourite titbits?

Stupid autocorrect! Not tears, treats!!

If our chickens are anything to go by, you are thinking too healthy. People food, basically. Fish and chips, mouldy cake, general leftovers, as long as it's not broccoli. They hate broccoli and eat round it . They do like peas, and sweetcorn, though.

Oh and they won't eat any raw vegetables at all. If you try and give the peelings they will give you their best "do we look like a compost heap?" glares. They are partial to spiders though.

We will draw a veil over the really disgusting things my girls love to eat (like the dead mice the cats bring them, slugs obv, and once a frog caused great excitement), but as a treat they adore a corn on the cob.

They have pellets in their feeder, and mixed corn is dispensed as hand food so they bustle over for it

Ours are free range so they spend most of the day eating ants, woodlice, snails, slugs, dead mice,..... but people food is still their favourite and brings them running.

Bananas. It took ours a while to accept leftovers but once they did, bananas were it.

Oh yeah

Oh and cat food. They peck on the cat flap. Cats not impressed, but if the cats refuse to eat something for a while then it goes out for the chickens (especially in summer) - the mankier it is the more the chooks like it.

I have new girls again, they are looking at rests as if they were poison. The old girls loved pasta, rice, chips, cereal, any veg, salad and anything that had gone mouldy in the salad drawer slightly past it's best such as M&S rocket as said, the manlier the better!

*mankier, not manlier

Whatever they find in the garden.
Dried mealworms
Corn on the cob
Bananas
Grapes
Watermelon!

Grapes cause fights here! It's like chicken basket ball if you chuck one in

Peas and sweetcorn definitely, pretty much any dinner leftovers and porridge. I make it up on the hob for them on cold mornings and I fool myself that they give a tiny rats ass that it's cold or that I went to the effort of making them porridge
They adore mealworms and I now have a colony in my reptile room to keep a steady supply, mainly for the winter when the ground is too frozen for them to forage for insects.

OMG I am.not the only idiot who makes porridge for chickens when it is cold

they like it best with parmesan crusts in

Mine love a cabbage dangling from the roof of their run. The 6 of them get through it in 2 days. Rice, peas and cheese together is a particular favourite. Mainly they just want whatever I'm eating

Roast potatoes

Leftover pasta and cheese, cooked potatoes, rice, peas, bacon...most things really.

I work at a cafe; I sometimes bring the slops home and I've noticed that they seem to like sweet corn more than anything else.

Mine are really partial to goose grass (those weeds with the sticky balls on). We pick it if we see it when we're out for a walk.

Sweet corn, left over potatoes, cake, chick peas, melon. Sometimes I buy melons if they're cheap especially for the chickens...

Cheddar cheese, they love it! I just give a tiny bit every evening before they return to the coop though.

They don't really need treats. Anything they eat should be similar to what they'd find in the wild. Seeds, bugs etc. Anything that they aren't designed to eat will cause them problems.

Mealworms, birdseed, and the leftover dog food seem to be the most popular. There's zero food waste here, the cats get any leftover fish or chicken, the dogs get any leftover cat food, and the chickens eat everything else.

natural (plain) yogurt
cat food
cooked rice
cheese
melon
blueberries
GRAPES

Mine don't seem to like any fruit at all, though I haven't tried grapes as there's never any left over in this house.

Veg peelings - def ignored if raw, but I just bung them all in a pyrex dish with a bit of water and zap them in the microwave for 4 or 5 mins, then let them cool. The girls love their cooked veggies.

Also good for squishy tomatoes and slimy bags of salad leaves that have been forgotten in the bottom of the fridge - it's great to have little waste.

And definitely sweetcorn. Even the empty husks after we've eaten all the good bits.

Titmuss online animal feeds do a huge bag of dried mealworms for a pretty decent price (lots less than our thieving petshop) so I buy one every 2 or 3 months and use them for treats for the chooks and the garden birds.

They also love bread of course, but I rarely give them it as I'm not sure it's very good for them - all carbs and not much nutritional value.

Ooh, and any uneaten cooked pasta - spaghetti fights are hilarious to watch.

And fish leftovers & ham rinds. And leftover pilau rice from last night's curry.

And if I've nothing green for them in the kitchen, and they've not been let out to roam if I'm too busy to watch for Mr Fox, they love a boxful of grass clippings when the teenager has mown the lawn. Keeps them occupied for hours having a good scratch through them.

Ours love kale, they have their own garden patch where we grow it.