Chicken Treats!

Trick or Treat for Chickens!

by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

Our chickens love treats, and we love to treat them well!

Both our adult flock and backyard flock are given greens on a regularly.  In addition to what they glean from the pasture, we toss a variety of greens and other veggie scraps to them on a regular basis.  We also make “chicken gruel” for the adult flock from time to time. 

You may recall from previous blog posts that chicken gruel is the powdery remains from their chicken feed that we then mix with water to make a gruel-like consistency.  Despite the fact that the chickens weren’t the least bit interested in eating the powder, they gobble up the gruel with enthusiasm.

Our young pullets are given organic greens and chicken gruel (or perhaps I should call it “pullet gruel”) on a daily basis.  They’re also given organic chicken scratch (aka “chicken candy”) occasionally, and live mealworms about once a week. 

Mealworms, you ask?  Mealworms are the larval form of the mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor, a type of darkling beetle -- and chickens love them!

Some may consider the feeding of live mealworms to be a bit ghoulish – but that’s what makes this an especially appropriate post-Halloween blog post!

We've been raising the mealworms ourselves, in a 10-gallon aquarium in the office that Anya and I currently share.  Our pullets get excited no matter what the treat – but nothing compares to the feeding frenzy that occurs when mealworms are offered.

Here’s a short video that shows a bit of that feeding frenzied excitement -- and the relative calm that follows, once there are no more mealworms to be had.

Enjoy!

Chicken Crazy?

Dining with the Chickens!

by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

One of my brothers, Dan, has long been known for his unique style of the ubiquitous “chicken dance” – often danced at weddings and other family gatherings since the early 1980s. 

The first time Dan visited our chickens at the Learning Farm a few years ago, he broke into his version of the chicken dance, exclaiming, “I’ve been waiting all my life to do my chicken dance with the chickens!” 

I guess multiple versions of “chicken crazy” runs in our family…

During a more recent visit to the Learning Farm, Dan progressed from “dancing with the chickens” to “dining with the chickens.”  He and my nephew, Ryan, helped me prepare some of our now-popular chicken gruel for the hens, and Dan decided to join them in their feeding frenzy!

He’s not really eating the stuff, of course (at least I hope he isn’t!) – but I took a photo anyway, and decided to share it here.