What you feed your hens will have a direct impact on their overall health and their productivity.

Chicken Feed - The importance of quality foods

It is always worth providing quality feed. Do not take shortcuts with cheap or low quality foods. Reducing the quality of the feed will reduce the capability of your hens to lay quality eggs and could harm their health. Use either layers pellets or mash which contain the vitamins and minerals your chickens need to lay healthy eggs.

In many respects, pellets is preferable over mash because the food is in pellet form they tend to be less wastage and it doesn't get distributed around by the chickens.

It is very important that there is no mould or dust in the feed you provide. The lungs of the birds are delicate and could be damaged by any dust in the feed. This can be a problem with some feeds and occasionally you will get a sack of that that is unreasonably dusty. Retain it and return to your supplier who should be happy to replace it.

Once you have found a brand of food that your hens thrive on I recommend you stick to it. I'd like all products there is going to be some variation in the foods but less so than if you are changing brands on a regular basis.

Water

It is critical that you provide plentiful supply of fresh water your chickens. Chickens will need to drink in order to eat. Considering that approximately 50% of egg is water gives you some indication of the importance water plays in their diet. Make sure that during the winter months the water supplies don't freeze. You may need to move their drinkers inside the coop to achieve this. In Summer, watch out for evaporation of their water. You should probably change the water once or twice a day as a matter of routine.

Grits and oyster shell supplements

The commercial products of layers pellets and mash will contain the quantities of grit that is normally adequate to feed to the chickens. The grit helps with their digestion, they use it in order to break down food in a similar way that we use our teeth. Many people use Oyster shell in addition to regular grit as a further calcium supplement.

Eggshells diet

A source of calcium in the chickens diet can be found in their own eggshells. Although this may seem a little bit strange at first it is quite common to feed the shells back to your chickens. You must make sure that they don't recognise what they are eating as you do don't want to encourage them to eat their own eggs. Bake the shells in the oven and then crush them up or blend them before providing them to your chickens. You can really pulverise the shell even to a powder and mix it with their regular feed. The calcium that they contain will be of great benefit to the chickens and the eggs that they produce.

Kitchen waste

To supplement the relatively dull diet of layers pellets or mash, you can use selected products from the kitchen. Cabbages, turnips, carrots, cauliflowers will add to the diet of your chickens. You can even hang large lumps of whole vegetable in their coops for them to peck on.

There's no problem giving out of date vegetables to chickens. You should avoid any meat products. They do love pasta and will go crazy if you give them some leftover spaghetti.