Chicken Treat Chart The Best Treats For Backyard Chickens

CHICKEN TREATS
This is a list of everything you can feed a chicken. However, everybody's chickens have their own tiny brains full of likes and dislikes, so while one person's chickens may come running for grapes or watermelon, another person's chickens may turn up their pointy little beaks at it. Anything on this list is worth a try.

At the bottom of the page are things you should avoid feeding your chickens.

Treat	Type	General Opinions
Apples	Raw and applesauce	Apple seeds contain cyanide, but not in sufficient quantities to kill.
Asparagus	Raw or cooked	Okay to feed, but not a favorite.
Bananas	Without the peel	High in potassium, a good treat.
Beans	Well-cooked only, never dry	Also, greenbeans.
Beets	Greens also.	.
Berries	All kinds	A treat, especially strawberries.
Breads	All kinds - good use for stale bread or rolls	Feed starches in moderation.
Broccoli & Cauliflower	.	Tuck into a suet cage and they will pick at it all day.
Cabbage & Brussels Sprouts	Whole head -	Hang a whole cabbage from their coop ceiling in winter so they have something to play with and greens to eat.
Carrots	Raw and cooked	They like carrot foliage too.
Catfood * (see bottom of page)	Wet and dry	Feed in strict moderation, perhaps only during moulting * (see bottom of page)
Cereal	Cheerios, etc.	Avoid highly sugared cereal such as Cocopuffs, etc.
Cheese	Including cottage cheese	Feed in moderation, fatty but a good source of protein and calcium
Cooked Chicken	.	They may like it and it won’t kill them, but it just seems so….. ummm………… wrong.
Corn	On cob and canned, raw and cooked	.
Crickets (alive)	Can be bought at bait or pet-supply stores.	Great treat – provides protein and it’s fun to watch the chickens catch them.
Cucumbers		Let mature for yummy seeds and flesh.
Eggs	Hardcooked and scrambled are a good source of protein, and a favorite treat.	Feed cooked eggs only because you don’t want your chickens to start eating their own raw eggs.
Eggplant	.	.
Fish / Seafood	Cooked only.
Flowers	Make sure they haven't been treated with pesticides, such as florist flowers might be.	Marigolds, nasturtiums, pansies, etc.
Fruit	Pears, peaches, cherries, apples
Grains	Bulgar, flax, niger, wheatberries,etc.	.
Grapes	Seedless only. For chicks, cutting them in half makes it easier for them to swallow.	Great fun - the cause of many entertaining "chicken keepaway" games.
Grits	Cooked
"Leftovers"	Only feed your chickens that which is still considered edible by humans, don't feed anything spoiled, moldy, oily, salty or unidentifiable.
Lettuce / Kale	Any leafy greens, spinach collards, chickweed included.	A big treat, depending on how much other greenery they have access to.
Mealworms (see photo after the chart)	Available at pet supply stores or on the internet, although shipping is expensive!	A huge(!) favorite treat, probably the most foolproof treat on the books.
Meat scraps of any kind.	Not too fatty.	In moderation, a good source of protein
Melon	Cantelope, etc.	Both seeds and flesh are good chicken treats.
Oatmeal	Raw or cooked	Cooked is nutritionally better.
Pasta / Macaroni	Cooked spaghetti, etc.	A favorite treat, fun to watch them eat it, but not much nutrition.
Peas	Peas and pea tendrils and flowers (thanks to YayChick for the advice)	.
Peppers (bell)	.	.
Pomegranates	Raw	Seeds are a big treat.
Popcorn	Popped, no butter, no salt.
Potatos / Sweet Potatos/Yams	Cooked only - avoid green parts of peels!	Starchy, not much nutrition
Pumpkins / Winter Squash	Raw or cooked	Both seeds and flesh are a nutritious treat.
Raisins	.
Rice	Cooked only	Pilaf mixes are okay too, plain white rice has little nutrition.
Scratch	Scratch is cracked corn with grains (such as wheat, oats and rye) mixed in.	Scratch is a treat for cold weather, not a complete feed. Toss it on the ground and let them scratch for it for something to do.
Sprouts	Wheat and oat sprouts are great!	Good for greens in mid-winter.
Summer Squash	Yellow squash and zucchini	Yellow squash not a huge favorite, but okay to feed.
Sunflower Seeds	Sunflower seeds with the shell still on is fine to feed, as well as with the shell off.	A good treat, helps hens lay eggs and grow healthy feathers.
Tomatos	Raw and cooked.
Turnips	Cooked.	Not a huge favorite
Watermelon	Served cold, it can keep chickens cool and hydrated during hot summers.	Seeds and flesh are both okay to feed.
Yogurt	Plain or flavored	A big favorite and good for their digestive systems. Plain is better.

The most favorite chicken treat of all - mealworms! Note the lightning speed of the chicken lunging for them.


Yogurt's a favorite, and very good for their intestinal health

Here are two photos from Rooster-Red of his chickens enjoying their yogurt!
Rooster-Red recommends standing back from your chickens when feeding yogurt, because the stuff flies EVERYwhere.









This is a mix of good quality birdseed, raw oatmeal and scratch.  
I only feed this on cold mornings, and I scatter it sparingly in their run
so they have something to scratch for and occupy their treat-obsessed minds.






  



Here's a bowl of warm oatmeal, girls!

  Warm oatmeal's even better after a big snowstorm

Don’t feed the following things to your chickens:
(I'm sure people have experienced exceptions to this list, but if we want to raise our birds the best way possible, "better safe than sorry".)

	Here’s why:
Raw green potato peels	Toxic substance called Solanine.
Anything real salty	Can cause salt poisoning in small bodies such as chickens.
Citrus	.
Dried or undercooked Beans	Raw, or dry beans, contain a poison called hemaglutin which is toxic to birds.
Avocado Skin and Pit	Skin and pit have low levels of toxicity.
Raw eggs	You don’t want to introduce your chickens to the tastiness of eggs which may be waiting to be collected in the nestboxes.
Candy, Chocolate, Sugar	Their teeth will rot… No, it’s just bad for their systems, and chocolate can be poisonous to most pets.
A quote from Nifty-Chicken, the Administrator of BYC:	"I gave up on my birds knowing what was best for them when I caught them all eating a block of Styrofoam pellets."

Regarding toxicity, the following is copied from a post by DLhunicorn on May 14, 2007 in a thread titled "Potato Peels". (Thank you DLhunicorn for your tremendously helpful and knowledgeable contributions to BYC!)
"Do not count on your chickens "knowing" what is bad for them...also do not count on these "toxic" plants immediately being identifiable by finding a dead bird the next morning...usually it is a slow process damaging organs , inhibiting the ability of your bird to utilize the nutrients in their feed, etc.
 
http://www.poultryhelp.com/toxicplants.html
Toxic Plants

here are some of my collected articles on nutrition :
http://dlhunicorn.conforums.com/index.c … 1157992073


* Regarding feeding CAT FOOD to chickens,

the following is from DLHunicorn in response to the listing of cat food in this Treats Chart: (A word to the wise, and thank you, DLHunicorn)
"You all know how I feel on cat food and I have posted the links and reasoning behind my objections several times ...it can potentially be detrimental to your birds health and even deadly in the right circumstances and for this reason I feel it should be left off the chart (as when you put it on it is as if you are condoning its use) I will repost here one of the sources for my objection:

..."While it is nutritionally essential, methionine excesses are far more toxic to poultry than similar excesses of tryptophan, lysine, and threonine (National Research Council, 1994). Force feeding methionine to excess can result in death to chicks (National Research Council, 1994). A dosage of 2 g / mature cat / day (20 to 30 g / kg dry diet) for 20 days induces anorexia, ataxia, cyanosis, methemoglobinemia and Heinz body formation resulting in hemolytic anemia (Maede, 1985). 

The original post was from http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/chicken-treat-chart-the-best-treats-for-backyard-chickens.

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