Thursday, October 28, 2010

Feeding Chickens Produce

Our chickens are fortunate that our local grocery store saves the outdated and bruised produce for them.  Every day we bring home between one and three garbage bags full. 

The produce is divided into several categories.  The first is ready-edible meaning little to no work on our part.  This includes lettuce, tomatoes, sprouts, etc.


The girls love the greens and can hardly wait until we dump the pails.


Sometimes shoving matches occur among the greedy feathered pigs.


The second category is edible-chippables.  These include carrots, sweet potatoes, beets, apples, cauliflower and much more.


This produce the chickens won't eat in the present form.  We use our chipper/shredder to break it into bite-sized morsels.


We toss the produce into the hopper -




and out comes yummy mush for the chickens.




The girls peck and scratch and gobble them up. 


What they don't eat gets tilled into the garden as compost.


Sometimes we have volunteers to help run the machinery - that is, until the food actually arrives.




2 comments:

  1. Interesting post. We're planning our first flock for the spring; I will definitely keep this in mind.

    Nice to meet a fellow Canadian blogger!

    Be well ~Andrea~

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  2. Just ran across your blog. Love this idea can't wait to talk with the grocery managers, my pigs and chickens would love this. And the chipper idea is AWESOME.

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