Raising chickens

[Laketon79]

If I were to raise chickens I would not feed them anything? No grains? What would they eat in the winter?

[Susan W]

No, you have to feed them. They just should have the opportunity to peck around in grass and dirt and you should feed them grains that don't include soy or corn. My friend Abbey has chickens and she purposely strews their feed in the pasture so they aren't tempted to hang in the coup all day.

Believe it or not, there is a magazine devoted to raising chickens. It's called Chickens.

[Tom Denham]

My farmer's chickens eat leftovers, broken tomatoes, old kale, excess turnip greens, bugs, worms, snakes, grass, and chicken feed. Sometimes they get organic feed and sometimes not because organic is expensive. 

[Delaine Ross]

I don't know where you live, but in my neighborhood they have "Urban chicken" classes on how to raise them. It's all the rage

[Vian]

I have a couple hens in my back yard. When they were young, we kept them penned in a corner of the yard with a coop and all, we fed them a chicken feed and lots of table scraps and they also could forage for bugs and stuff. Now that they are older and not laying anymore, we let them roam around the yard. I feed them less of the chicken feed because they get to forage a wider area, and I've been giving them a lot more kitchen scraps too, but when it gets cold, we'll have to give them more feed because they won't be able to find bugs to eat and kitchen scraps will freeze in a few hours.

 

However, I think I understand what you are saying. You want healthy chickens and healthy eggs and since we are not eating grains, you don't want to feed your chickens grains either. The best I think you can manage is no corn or soy. Chickens are birds, and birds generally require a high carb diet because they have a very fast metabolism. In the winter I have to give my chickens lots of starches and carbs so they can stay warm (they do have a heated coop and can get to a nice spot under the house as well).  I'm not sure where to buy chicken feed without soy or corn, but I was getting eggs from a farmer that raised pastured chickens that were not fed soy or corn. I assumed he fed them a mixture of other grains, plus they were in very large fenced fields where they could get bugs and grass and such.