7 Healthy Treats Your Chickens Will Love

We all love to spoil our chickens with treats every now and then.Giving treats to your chickens helps to give their diet some variation. It also helps to keep them happy and laying eggs.If you’re not careful buying treats for your chickens can cost lots of money, that’s why most of our treats are normally kitchen scraps and left overs… In fact, 75% of the cost of keeping chickens is made up of

chicken feed.

With that being said, I still love to spoil our chickens and they get more than their fair share of treats!

Let’s take a look at our Chicks’ Top 7 favorite healthy treats.

1. Pasta and Noodles

Pasta and Noodles Chicken TreatsHave you ever seen free range chickens running around the garden with streams of pasta flowing out of their beak!?

Cooked pasta can be a cheap but filling treat for your chickens. Two cups of pasta is more than enough for a flock of six chickens.

Again, like with cottage cheese you can mix other food into the pasta. A nice creamy sauce or chopped up vegetables can go a long way to keeping your chickens happy.

However, they will be perfectly happy with just dry pasta.

If you are going to feed your chicken pasta, just make sure to cook it beforehand! I’m not sure they would appreciate hard, crunchy, raw pasta…

2. Ginger

We’ve already written about the superfood ginger and some of the health benefits your chickens will experience when eating ginger. Certain studies claim that feeding

chickens ginger can increase the size of the eggs and also improve the amount of antioxidants in the egg yolk.

I tend to only use ginger when our chickens moult as it can help them grow back their feathers quicker.

If you are going to feed your chickens ginger you can either mix ginger powder in with their pellets or you can mix it in with their water.

However, make sure you only give your chickens ginger no more than once per month. Feeding your chickens too much ginger can cause muscle swelling and occasionally death.

3. Oatmeal

Banana Nut Oatmeal with HoneyOatmeal is one of our girls’ favourite treats and it’s probably their favourite treat during the cold winter months.I let our girls out of their coop and straight away they can smell the oatmeal. I just pour the oatmeal straight out into their trough- I’ve found in the past they canbully each other if I just put the pan down because they can’t all get to it at once.

You can also add either maple syrup or bananas to the oatmeal to help give it some variety.

4. Mealworms

Mealworms for ChickensMealworms are without a doubt our chickens’ favourite treat of all time.

They are a very quick and easy treat to give your chickens and require no preparation.

I just buy a 1lb bag of them and dump them into a pile inside our girls’ pen. It’s very entertaining to watch the chickens run back and forth with the mealworms in their mouth.

You can normally buy them from your local fishing/tackle store but they can be quite expensive- $20USD for 1lb. If you give your chickens mealworms regularly it might be worth considering farming your own mealworms.

5. Scrambled Egg

Sometimes during the peak of summer, our girls can get carried away and lay too many eggs for us to cope with!

I could store the eggs or freeze them to use later, but instead I prefer to cook several of them and make scrambled eggs for the girls.

Scrambled egg is full of protein and can quickly fill your girl’s up.

Note: Always make sure you cook any eggs which you feed your chickens. You DON’T want your chickens getting a taste for raw eggs because they will start eating their own eggs.

6. Pumpkin

Pumpkins are another one of those refreshing treats with added health benefits.

The seeds inside pumpkins help with worming. According to Delaware State University pumpkin seeds “contain a deworming compound called cucurbitacin which has been used to expel tapeworms”.

Pumpkin can be very hard to cut, so I just put the pumpkin inside our chicken pen and then hit it with a mallet to break it open for the girls.

Your girls will be entertained for hours as they merrily peck away. You will notice they will eat the pumpkin in its entirety- bar the skin.

Another benefit I found was that their egg yolks turned vibrant orange for a few days after they’d eaten the pumpkin.

7. Watermelon

Watermelon is the perfect summer snack for chickens.

Not only is it full of water and extremely refreshing for them, it also contains lots of essential vitamins and minerals.

I buy watermelon cheap when it’s in season and slice them up into small chunks. I then take the small chunks and freeze them.

During a hot summers day I get the frozen chunks out and place them into the chickens’ water bowl. This helps keep the water cool and the chickens can also peck at the watermelon.

You could also, mix the frozen watermelon in with plain greek yogurt. This helps spread the watermelon out and greek yogurt is also very refreshing for them.

One important point to make here is that you shouldn’t give your chickens too many treats as this can actually cause your chickens to stop laying eggs. Just make sure

that their treats are part of a consistent and varied diet and your chickens will be fine.

Let us know which treats your chickens love to snack on in the comments below!