How I Feed 7 Chickens on $0 a day

Here's our food scraps. That's one day. I don't know why this got put in there. These eggs must have went bad, but that's one thing. Animal products, including their own animal products, eggs. I'm just going to lay this out and then we'll talk about what's in it. First up, eggs. I don't know what happened to these. They must have went bad, left them out, something like that. Got old as leftovers. They look like leftovers. Eggs, yes, chicken eggs. It's a great source of protein for them. Often the only source of protein you can get for them if you're feeding them this way. Pepper, they're going to love those seeds. They're going to peck at this. What they don't eat, maybe that stem, is going to break down into this deep mulch system, and eventually under this mulch they're going to work it into compost. Same thing with this onion. You know, they say not to feed onions and garlic. They say not to feed chicken a lot, but chickens will eat just about anything. You just maybe don't want to feed them junk food. You shouldn't even be eating junk food. They shouldn't be eating junk food. Onions. They say that it'll make the eggs taste like onions. Same thing with garlic, it'll make the eggs taste like garlic. I've never had that experience, but if you think about it, who really cares if it did? Because who doesn't like onions and garlic with their eggs? I love it. But I haven't seen that happen. Strawberry tops, potatoes, cooked potatoes. They won't eat raw potatoes. Some people say that's toxic. Well, they've, they figured out that they I believe that they know that. They do have a bird brain, but I believe they know what they can and cannot eat. As long as you're feeding them only citrus or only onions and garlic or only raw potatoes, then you could have trouble. But you know, you could put your— maybe in the winter if you have some potato peels or broccoli stems, you could— if you're like us, you have a wood stove and that's going, might as well put your pot on top of there and cook that watermelon peels. They'll eat that all the way down to the rind, and then the rind will become compost. If you have pigs, pigs will eat the entire thing, but chickens will eat mostly. That's a leftover quiche again with some eggs and cooked potatoes and some greens. Ooh, here's another bad boy— avocado. Oh, don't feed them avocado! The shells and the pits are poisonous to them. Yeah, but I've never seen them eat the shells and the pit. Even if this was whole, they would peck through it and get to the flesh, and they love that flesh. Good source of fat for them, protein. There's just lettuce greens in here. There is citrus. That's another bad boy. Don't feed them citrus. They'll eat, they'll eat this part as long as you're not only feeding them citrus. They love it and it's good for them. It's got certain oils in it that they need and can thrive on. And then the peel will eventually— we don't give them a lot of citrus because we don't like to see the orange on top of our garden in our chicken run for a very long time. But it would break a little bit, breaks down a little faster, gets mixed in with, with this. Uh, they're on deep mulch here, that counts. I put it directly on the ground so I encourage them to stir it. Oh look, here's, here's some beef, some leftover beef in a Mexican. Give them some of that animal protein. And I don't see why this is not— oh, there's a garlic shell. That'll probably end up as compost. But I don't see why this fresh from our house— notice it's a lot of Whole Foods— is not 100% better than any, the best, even organic stale grain, mixed grain. Spaghetti squash. Anything in here, Randy? Randy's behind the camera. Anything in here surprise you, Randy? Nope, not at all. Okay, let's let them out. Let's see what they like. What'd she go for first? Oh, quinoa. Quinoa in there. That's a grain. They love that. This one's picking at the potatoes. This one's going down here right on the egg. Look, she's found the eggs. And you know they like it when they pick it and they run off so nobody else will get it. They'll eat an egg, they'll even eat chicken. Some people are afraid to even feed these guys meat. You'll see in the store egg cartons saying vegetarian fed for the eggs. And I'm thinking, those poor chickens. Why? Because they're omnivores. They're made and designed— look, they're picking on it. That's what they're going for first. They're getting it. They're getting the eggs. They're getting a bit of the pepper seeds. Sort of feel sorry for those ones that are vegetarian fed, especially if they're inside and can't get outside and at least get a bug. The trick to feeding these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7 hens on $0 a day Number 1, we eat a lot of whole foods. We're not eating a lot of processed foods, so there's a lot of veggies, a lot of meat, some grains in the form of quinoa or rice or seeds from that pepper plant. I believe if a chicken could, ideally their diet would be a third of seeds, not necessarily grains, a third of animal protein, and a third of greens. And I think they're getting this today. This is a perfect platform for this. I think if you're trying to ration this out and figure out if you have enough, I'm pretty sure about half a pound of average food waste from your house would service one chicken. And plus they're in here on this deep mulch, which they dig into this and they find biota life there that we can't even see that they eat. These chickens have been compared to my chickens down in the crop garden who get commercial organic grains. They're just as old as these chickens. These chickens are getting older, so they're not performing as well as they used to with eggs. The flock that's getting grains versus the flock that's getting 100% of our food scraps is performing about the same. This might be a hair less, but there's zero— there's zero dollars involved. Zero dollars involved. Somebody asked me at a conference recently, could I keep 4 chickens I mean, is that worth it? And I'm thinking they're thinking some of the investment, some of the what they're gonna have to feed them, you know, the amount of eggs you're gonna get. Well, you're probably gonna get 2 eggs a day, so you're gonna get a dozen eggs a week or more. And with 4 chickens, about any family is going to have enough food scraps to feed to them. Look, bashful. Look, she's already filled her crop. So the trick here is just start feeding them food scraps. The average American is throwing away 16 or 18— I don't remember the exact fact— percent of their trash is food scraps. So begin considering, if you're smart, just getting a few chickens just to get rid of your food scraps and start putting in the trash, and maybe you'll get some eggs out of it. You'll for sure You'll for sure get some compost out of it if you do a deep mulch like wood chips or hay or grass clippings, yard waste, anything like that. Say leaves, leaves. You'll get eggs, you'll get compost, you'll get entertainment. So let's say you don't have enough food scraps for the day and you need to feed them some other stuff but you're on a tight budget. I've identified at least 20 creative ways to feed these guys off the land. I mean, just look over there, we got some scraps from the garden. Bugs would be in that garden. We could walk around, we could pick weeds from the garden, we could walk around and get weeds. There are so many surprising ways just in your front yard to feed these guys, especially a flock, just right in front of your nose. I've got more on that down in the description if you're interested in that, going a step further than just food scraps. Maybe you've got a bigger flock, maybe you don't have this much food scraps on a regular basis. I can help you with that with many creative ways. Check out the description for that. Oh yes, let's show this. Oh, a cheese. Moldy too. It's almost kind of like the grosser the food, the better. Good for you.