The truth is there’s people who will tell you that if you worry about what your hens eat, you’re over complicating backyard chickens.
Feeding hens certainly isn’t complicated, but that doesn’t mean you should make things so simple your health and your flock suffers.
The truth is you CAN improve their health and yours when you improve your hens’ diet.
I know from experience that when your hens get a sub-par dinner, you run the risk of scrawny hens, unhealthy eggs, or even no eggs.
We actually went through a 6 month period a number of years ago because we relied on a forage-heavy diet – you reap what you sow, and nobody needs to deal with feeding hens that aren’t producing.
Once we started looking at our flock’s diet, researching, and testing some of the things I learned in scientific studies, our flock’s health dramatically improved, our hens were happier, and we were happier – because we started getting eggs again, which is why we started keeping chickens in the first place!
In this episode, we myth bust 3 common misconceptions about feeding chickens that can impact your health.
There’s more than enough evidence that shows us that what your hens eat predicts the quality of their eggs – and you can ignore these results or embrace them and benefit from them.
Increasing the healthy parts of your chicken’s eggs while decreasing the unhealthy parts isn’t complicated, despite what you might read online and on Facebook.
You’ll learn:
- Why raising chickens “traditionally” like our grandparents did 50 or 100 years ago is not always the best idea
- Why ignoring modern research means you’re doing yourself and your flock a disservice
- How educating yourself about your flock’s diet isn’t over complicating backyard chickens
- The one thing you should always do if you’re totally overwhelmed by all the advice out there about what to feed your backyard hens.
Links we discuss:
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I’d like to hear from you!
Do you think you’ll try changing how you feed your chickens? Leave a comment below!
Maat van Uitert is a backyard chicken and sustainable living expert. She is also the author of Chickens: Naturally Raising A Sustainable Flock, which was a best seller in it’s Amazon category. Maat has been featured on NBC, CBS, AOL Finance, Community Chickens, the Huffington Post, Chickens magazine, Backyard Poultry, and Countryside Magazine. She lives on her farm in Southeast Missouri with her husband, two children, and about a million chickens and ducks. You can follow Maat on Facebook here and Instagram here.