Pickings can get a bit thin in winter, even for free ranging chooks. Here a few treats for your chooks:
1 worms - high in protein, with that added ‘thrill of the chase’ element for bored chooks. If you’ve turned your kitchen waste into worms in your wormery, you’ll be turning it into eggs and meat via your chooks.
2 silverbeet (swiss chard) or perpetual spinach – fill an empty space in your garden, and get some silverbeet growing in autumn so you’ve got some extra greens to toss over the fence to your chooks.
3 sprouted grains – more nutritious than whole grains when fresh food is scarce. Soak for a day, rinse and drain them once a day and feed at about day five.
4 native trees – anything that sheds a seed planted near the chicken coop. It will probably help the bees too.
5 lawn clippings – as long as you haven’t fertilised or treated your lawn, they’ll scratch around in a bag of lawn clippings very happily.
