Trash as chicken feed

Vermont compost company raises chickens on food scraps

The most intriguing
chicken-raising operation I’ve ever read about entails running chickens
free range through a compost facility.  Vermont Compost Company
raises 1,200 laying hens, feeding them no feed other than the food
scraps and the insects that naturally grow in their mounds of
compost.  The roving poultry spend their days turning the compost
and laying eggs — isn’t that the perfect chicken life?




Although we probably
don’t want to move to an industrial-scale compost facility, many urban
chicken-keepers use this idea on a much smaller scale to supplement
their chicken feed.  Some restaurants or grocery stores are
willing to keep a bin of discarded food as long as you promise to pick
it up every day or two, and the scraps are often enough to provide all
the feed your chickens need.  We live too far from anywhere to put
this idea into practice, but I’d love to hear from anyone who has
turned trash into chicken feed.




This post is the last in
our current series on
homemade chicken
feed

I hope that you’ve enjoyed seeing the cornucopia of options, and I’ll
be sure to keep you updated as our experiments progress over the
year.  Meanwhile, check out our
homemade chicken
waterer
, great for
use in any chicken coop or tractor.

This post is part of our Homemade Chicken Feed series
Read all of the entries:

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  1. Darren (Green Change) March 4, 2010
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