If you’re wondering “What do chickens eat?” my suggestion is to try vegetable scraps as a good source of food. The problem is that not all vegetables are easy for chickens to consume, despite their ability to peck at things. Vegetables like broccoli, carrots, potatoes and beets are either tough or have an outer skin that can be discouraging to the average flock of chickens. There are two ways to help your birds consume these veggies: 1) cook them until they’re soft; and, 2) shred or grid them so they’re easy to consume. Or, you could combine the techniques as I often do with potatoes.
With respect to the first approach, I’ve suggested making your own chicken food using rice or potatoes as a base, and adding some alfalpha cubes or pellets to provide nutrition much like they might get when consuming natural grass. For the second approach, let me introduce my vegetable grinding station for chickens.
As shown in the photo above, the vegetable grinding station consists of an old vegetable shredder mounted on a wooden support that is affixed to the upper end of a worm bed made from a 10 foot section of culvert that was mounted vertically in the ground. The chickens love to scratch on the top of the worm bed, looking for tasty worms, and having a pile of shredded vegetables provides nice pickings too. The pile of shredded material attracts the worms to the surface, and whatever the chickens don’t care to eat will be consumed by the worms.
Here is an example of what remains of shredded beets among the surface litter in the worm bed.
I’ve found that most all of the shredded vegetables are gone by the end of the day, especially when more desirable food, like lettuce and fruit, has been depleted.
The vegetable grinding station also includes a limited cutting area in the event that vegetable scraps are a bit too large to fit through the shredder without modification. Below the vegetable shredder is a magnetic tool holder that keeps a pair of scissors, a chef knife and a machete handy. The scissors are used for opening garbage bags filled with vegetable scraps that can’t easily be untied. The chef knife is great for cutting larger vegetables down to the size the shredder will readily accept. The machete is used to quickly chop up apples, melons, pears, oranges and other fruits and vegetables on the ground to make it easier for the chickens to gain access to the goodness inside the peels and rinds.
The vegetable grinder is made from corrosion resistant material so it does just fine outdoors, and it’s mounted to the wooden assembly with a thumb screw as intended for temporary use, and a couple of deck screws permanently pinch it in place through holes carefully drilled through its base. The added strength of screw mounting this device will help hold it in position for daily grinding of carrots, potatoes, beets, sweet potatoes, water melon rind, celery and broccoli. Using deck screws makes installation a snap and provides many years of service without concern about corrosion of the metal screws. In the event the station needs to be rebuilt, it’s an easy matter to unscrew it to replace components.
Vintage vegetable grinders/shredders like this can be found at garage sales (where I found this one), rummage sales and auctions for a few dollars, and many are available for purchase online. One identical to mine is currently listed on eBay for about $50. (In my mind that price just can’t be justified in light of the intended use, especially when you consider that shipping alone would more than cover the cost of one found locally at a private sale.) You might try FreeCycle to see if someone local has one they’d like to get rid, then your cost is only that associated of going to pick it up. Be sure to get one that can be mounted to a sturdy surface so you can feed with one hand and crank with the other for steady processing of the scraps. Magnetic tool holders can be found at local hardware stores and online sources of inexpensive tools like Harbor Freight (where I obtained this one). All of the wood was scrap material around my place just waiting to be part of another project, and the deck screws were part of my assortment of fasteners, like the scrap wood, waiting to be put to good use.
And, of course, the chickens love the combination of shredded vegetables in the worm bed, and those yummy worms that the vegetable scraps attract to the surface.
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Clair Schwan enjoys finding ways to feed his chickens naturally and inexpensively, and in a sustainable manner. Whether he’s grinding homegrown vegetables scraps or discards from the local market, he’s happy to incorporate them as food for both his chickens and his bed of red wigglers. Whether it’s worms or veggie scraps, they come lead to the end product of fresh eggs.
