What Can Chickens Eat?

Serving: Chop apple into pieces and remove the core and seeds. Offer a few times a week.

Nutrition: Fibre and vitamin C, in both the flesh and the skin.

⚠️ Caution: Seeds contain amygdalin (a cyanide compound) — remove the core before feeding.

🚫 Avoid: The core and its seed pocket.

Serving: Offer a handful of picked berries, or simply let a ranging flock work a hedge you know has not been sprayed.

Nutrition: Antioxidants, vitamin C, vitamin K and a good deal of fibre.

🚫 Avoid: Berries from sprayed roadside or field-margin brambles.

Serving: Scatter a small handful per few birds as an occasional treat. No need to cut them.

Nutrition: Unusually dense in antioxidants for their size, plus vitamins C and K.

Serving: Set out the scooped-out seedy centre and the rind after you have cut a melon up. Chunks work too.

Nutrition: Water, vitamin A and vitamin C, with a little more substance than watermelon.

Serving: Pit the cherries and offer the flesh, whole or chopped, as an occasional treat.

Nutrition: Antioxidants plus vitamins A and C.

⚠️ Caution: Pits, stems, and leaves contain cyanide compounds — feed pitted flesh only.

🚫 Avoid: Pits, stems and leaves.

Serving: Scatter a few fresh or thawed cranberries and see whether your birds take to them. Halve them for smaller hens.

Nutrition: Antioxidants and vitamin C, with very little sugar by fruit standards.

🚫 Avoid: Dried sweetened cranberries, and anything from a sauce or jelly.

Serving: Halve fresh figs and offer one between a few birds occasionally. Dried figs want chopping and rationing harder still.

Nutrition: Fibre, calcium and potassium, with sugar high enough to be the limiting factor.

Serving: Halve a kiwi and let the birds scoop it out, or peel and dice it. An occasional treat rather than a staple.

Nutrition: More vitamin C by weight than an orange, plus vitamin K and potassium.

Serving: Cut the flesh off the stone, dice it, and offer a small amount occasionally. The skin is safe but often left.

Nutrition: Vitamin A and vitamin C in quantity, alongside a lot of sugar.

Serving: Stone the fruit, chop it into pieces, and offer a few times a week. Bruised windfalls are ideal.

Nutrition: Vitamins A and C plus fibre, in a fruit that is largely water and sugar.

🚫 Avoid: The stone, and any fruit that has begun to ferment.

Serving: Core the pear, chop the flesh, and offer it a few times a week. Overripe fruit is fine as long as it is not fermenting.

Nutrition: Fibre and vitamin C, with a higher sugar load than an apple.

🚫 Avoid: The core and its seeds.

Serving: Stone plums and halve them before offering. If a tree overhangs the run, pick up windfalls daily rather than trusting the flock to spit out the stones.

Nutrition: Vitamin C, vitamin K and fibre, in a notably sugary package.

🚫 Avoid: The stones, and windfalls that have started to ferment.

Serving: Cut one in half and set it down cut-side up, or scatter loose arils. An occasional treat.

Nutrition: Antioxidants, vitamin C and vitamin K, in seeds that are mostly juice.

🚫 Avoid: The bitter white pith and the outer skin.

Serving: Scatter a small handful between a few birds. Berries that have gone soft are perfect, mouldy ones are not.

Nutrition: Fibre, vitamin C and antioxidants, in a soft berry that needs no preparation.

Serving: Offer whole or halved berries a few times a week. Overripe berries from the garden are perfect for the flock.

Nutrition: Vitamin C, fibre and antioxidants, with the leafy tops safe as well.

Serving: Offer ripe, chopped tomato a few times a week. Keep birds out of the tomato patch so they can't nibble foliage or green fruit.

Nutrition: Vitamins A, C and K, plus the antioxidants that give a ripe tomato its colour.

⚠️ Caution: Leaves, vines, and green (unripe) tomatoes contain solanine — toxic. Only ripe flesh is safe.

🚫 Avoid: Leaves, stems, vines, and unripe green fruit.

Serving: Halve a chilled watermelon and set it out on a hot afternoon. Because it is mostly water and sugar, treat it as a snack, not a meal.

Nutrition: About 90% water with vitamins A and C — the value here is hydration far more than calories.

Serving: Chop peppers, seeds and all, and offer a few times a week. Keep the flock out of the pepper bed itself.

Nutrition: A great deal of vitamin C, plus vitamin A in the red and orange ones.

🚫 Avoid: Leaves, stems and flowers of the plant.

Serving: Offer raw or steamed broccoli a few times a week. Remove any that goes slimy.

Nutrition: Fibre, vitamin C and vitamin K, in the florets and the stems alike.

Serving: Halve raw sprouts or offer them lightly cooked, a few times a week. The bare stalk makes a serviceable pecking toy.

Nutrition: Vitamin C, vitamin K and fibre, in a dense little package.

Serving: Hang a whole head at head height, or offer chopped leaves. Fine several times a week.

Nutrition: Vitamins C and K plus fibre.

Serving: Grate raw carrot or offer cooked chunks a few times a week. Chop the tops finely.

Nutrition: Beta-carotene, which deepens yolk colour, plus fibre and vitamins.

Serving: Hang a head, or offer chopped florets and the outer leaves raw or steamed, several times a week.

Nutrition: Vitamin C, vitamin K and fibre.

Serving: Chop celery across the stalk into short pieces so the strings come apart, and offer the leaves whole.

Nutrition: Mostly water, with modest vitamin K and potassium; the leaves beat the stalks.

Serving: Halve a cucumber lengthwise and let the flock scoop out the middle, or offer chopped chunks.

Nutrition: Mostly water, with modest vitamins and minerals — a hydration treat.

Serving: Offer torn leaves several times a week, or hang a whole stalk as a winter boredom-buster.

Nutrition: Vitamins A, C and K plus calcium — about as nutrient-dense as greens get.

Serving: Offer torn leaves daily if you like; hang a whole head to give the flock something to peck at.

Nutrition: Hydration plus vitamins A and K — far more of both in the darker leaves.

Serving: Scatter a small handful of thawed frozen peas, or offer fresh pods. Fine several times a week.

Nutrition: More protein than most vegetables, plus vitamins A, C and K and useful fibre.

Serving: Cut a pumpkin open and let the flock work at the flesh and seeds. Leftover Halloween pumpkins are perfect if not painted or rotten.

Nutrition: Vitamin A, fibre and antioxidants in the flesh; fat and protein in the seeds.

🚫 Avoid: Anything painted, glittered, waxed, or already going soft.

Serving: Offer cooked mash or chunks, or raw grated sweet potato, a couple of times a week.

Nutrition: Vitamin A in quantity, plus fibre — in the flesh, the skin and the vines alike.

Serving: Halve or quarter a squash and set it out, seeds and all. Roasting the flesh makes it easier going for older birds.

Nutrition: Vitamin A and fibre in the flesh, with fat and protein in the seeds.

Serving: Halve one lengthwise and let the flock hollow it out, or offer it grated or chopped into chunks.

Nutrition: Mostly water, with vitamin C, some vitamin A and a little potassium.

Serving: Toss in bolted or frost-damaged plants and see whether your flock takes any interest.

Nutrition: Vitamin K and aromatic oils; a trace contributor rather than a real food.

Serving: Pull bolted plants whole and toss them in, or offer cut leaves. Stems and seed heads are fine too.

Nutrition: Vitamins A, C and K, plus potassium — respectable for a soft herb.

Serving: Let the flock graze it. If you are seeding a run or a rotation paddock, clover is worth including in the mix.

Nutrition: Notably high protein for a green, plus calcium and a range of trace minerals.

Serving: Pull whole plants and toss them in, or simply let the flock work over an untreated lawn.

Nutrition: Vitamins A, C and K, calcium and iron — genuinely nutrient-dense for a weed.

🚫 Avoid: Anything from a lawn treated with herbicide or weed-and-feed.

Serving: Let birds pick at the flowers, or scatter petals into feed. Deadheaded flowers are ideal.

Nutrition: Xanthophylls — the carotenoid pigments that deepen yolk colour — plus trace vitamins.

Serving: Let it grow where birds can reach it, or scatter cut sprigs in the coop and nest boxes.

Nutrition: Trace vitamins and aromatic oils; a flavour and freshening plant more than a food.

Serving: Grow it where the birds can reach it, or cut and offer leaves and flowers. Nothing needs preparing.

Nutrition: Vitamin C and peppery mustard oils, in a plant that is edible from top to bottom.

Serving: Let it grow within reach, or crumble dried oregano into feed. Both are fine as a routine.

Nutrition: Aromatic compounds including carvacrol and thymol; negligible as calories.

Serving: Offer whole bunches or let the flock strip a plant. Fine several times a week.

Nutrition: A great deal of vitamin K, plus vitamins A and C and useful iron.

Serving: Scatter whole or rolled barley as a scratch grain, or sprout it into fodder for a winter flock.

Nutrition: Carbohydrate with more fibre and protein than corn, plus B vitamins.

Serving: Offer corn on the cob, or a scatter of kernels, as a treat rather than the main meal.

Nutrition: High energy and low protein — calorie-dense, and not balanced on its own.

Serving: Offer dry rolled oats or plain (unsweetened) cooked oatmeal a few times a week.

Nutrition: Fibre, protein and B vitamins.

Serving: Offer cooked, cooled, unsalted quinoa a couple of times a week. Rinse it before cooking, as you would for yourself.

Nutrition: A complete protein, unusually for a grain, plus magnesium, iron and fibre.

Serving: Offer plain cooked or uncooked rice as an occasional treat. Skip heavily salted or seasoned rice dishes.

Nutrition: Carbohydrate; brown rice adds a little fibre and B vitamins over white.

Serving: Scatter a small handful between several birds, more freely during a molt and sparingly outside it.

Nutrition: High fat and protein, plus vitamin E and the amino acids feathers are built from.

Serving: Offer small pieces of plain cooked meat, trimmed of heavy fat, occasionally. No sauces, no salt, nothing cured or processed.

Nutrition: Complete protein and fat — the densest protein most flocks will ever be offered.

⚠️ Caution: Cooked and plain only — raw meat carries a bacterial risk, and cured or processed meat is far too salty.

Serving: Offer scrambled or hard-boiled egg occasionally. Crush and dry the shells separately as a calcium source.

Nutrition: A near-complete protein — genuinely useful during molt or for a run-down bird.

⚠️ Caution: Feed only cooked eggs — raw eggs can trigger egg-eating behavior in the flock.

Serving: Offer small amounts of plain cooked fish flaked off the bone. Nothing battered, smoked, salted or sitting in brine.

Nutrition: High-quality protein plus omega-3 fatty acids.

🚫 Avoid: Batter, brine, and smoked or heavily salted preparations.

Serving: Offer a small pinch per bird, especially during molt. Buy mealworms labeled for poultry.

Nutrition: High protein and fat — which is exactly why they are a molt-season standby.

Serving: Offer a small handful of plain popped corn. No salt, butter, or sugar, and avoid unpopped kernels.

Nutrition: Essentially just corn — carbohydrate, and not much else.

⚠️ Caution: Salted, buttered, or caramel popcorn is not safe — offer plain, air-popped only.

🚫 Avoid: Unpopped kernels, and anything salted, buttered or caramel-coated.