Did you get chickens in order to save money at the grocery store, then find you were paying more for their food than you were for the eggs?! We did too. Luckily for all of us, these 10 cheap chicken feed ideas will help you save money.
There’s an abundance of free chicken food out there, you just need to know where to look… Most of these solutions are free or cheap and require very little work on your part.
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10 Cheap Chicken Feed Ideas to Help you Save Money
1. Free-Ranging
Letting your flock out to free-range is the number one way to cut down on feed costs. Chickens are hard wired to search for their own food outside. They’ll pick at grasses and weeds, dig for worms, and even hunt down larger prey like mice and lizards.
Free-ranging is very easy on you, all you have to do is open the door and let them go wild. The chickens will do all the hard work. Best of all, it’s one of our top five ways to feed your chickens for free. And your flock will help to keep the pest and weed level down in your yard.
2. Farmer’s Markets
Hit up the farmer’s market within the last hour of operation and you’ll find tons of vendors throwing out stacks of produce. These fruits and veggies (and sometimes bread) may be unsellable for some reason or another, but are usually perfectly good for your chickens.
Vendors will often toss this produce in a pile behind their stand or by the trash cans. Ask if you can take some home for your chickens and they’ll more than likely be glad for the free haul-away service.
3. Grocery Stores, Restaurants, and Shops
Making a simple phone call to the local bakery or a favorite restaurant can be a great source of cheap chicken feed, saving you tons of money. Thousands of pounds of food are thrown away weekly, simply because it’s a little mushy, bruised, or stale. Again, these foods may not be sellable to patrons, but your chickens will love it. You can drive up to the dumpsters and check it out, but it would be a better idea to call the manager beforehand.
Getting permission first will not only keep you out of trouble, but grocers are often willing to set aside food for you if you simply ask. They get the pleasure of knowing the food isn’t going to waste, and you get free goods for your birds, win-win!
4. Grow Fodder
Fodder is incredibly easy to grow and so nutritious for your chickens. It’s especially helpful to grow fodder in the winter, when grasses and plants are hard to come by for your flock. Fodder shouldn’t be used as a replacement for chicken feed, but rather as an easy and cheap chicken feed supplement to the feed bill. It will provide valuable nutrients and fiber for you flock.
This article lays out step-by-step how to grow fodder for your chickens:
How to Grow Fodder for your Chickens
5. Ferment Their Feed
Fermentation is the hot new thing in health lately, but did you know you could ferment your chicken feed? Fermentation helps to break down the food, making it easier to digest and increasing the probiotic and enzyme content of the food, making it healthier for your birds.
This post on fermenting chicken feed is very informative:
Natural Chicken Keeping: Fermented Feed
6. Make Your Own Feed
Your average commercial chicken feed is mostly made up of cheap filler, such as corn or soy. It’s not the most nutritious blend for your flock, and you need to supplement with fresh produce or free ranging for healthy birds. While organic and non-GMO poultry feed does exist, it’s usually very expensive, and why hand your hard earned money over when you can do it yourself?
Making highly nutritious chicken feed at home can save you money and improve the health of your flock. If you can find a source for bulk grains and seeds, you’re already halfway there.
7. Grow a Chicken Garden:
There are tons of easy to grow plants that are beloved by chickens. Consider growing a garden just for your chickens to cut down on feed costs.
Chickens especially love to eat these garden goodies:
- Pumpkins/Squash– very well adored by chickens and very nutritious
- Leafy Greens- lettuce, kale, mustard, and arugula are easy to grow
- Tomatoes– Grape tomatoes are fun, toss them in the coop and watch your chickens play keep away!
- Sunflowers– These are easy to grow and you can chop off the whole flower head and toss it into the coop
Grow a Garden with Free Food for Your Chickens
8. Supplement with Hearty Treats
You can buy huge bags of treats at the feed store or on Amazon for really cheap. Supplementing the flock’s feed with these hearty treats will fill them up and provide much needed protein on the cheap.
Mealworms make excellent treats for chickens. They’re high in protein and the birds simply adore them. You can even go the extra mile and raise them yourself to really see some savings!
Black Oil Sunflower Seeds are our chickens absolute favorite treat. A 50 pound bag lasts us more than six months and is very inexpensive at our local feed store. Sunflower seeds are very nutritionally dense and a little bit goes a long way with your chickens.
To save yourself the cost of this treat, try growing them yourself! Sunflowers can grow practically anywhere and require very little care.
The Flock Block is another treat we always have on hand. One of these will last our flock several months, and its not only full of nutritious seeds, it keeps them busy in the boring winter months. You can buy a flock block, or if your birds go through them too quickly, you make your own flock block really cheaply.
The Prairie Homestead shows you how in this post: DIY Flock Block Substitute
9. Feed Weeds to Your Chickens
Most of the weeds in your yard are very well-liked by chickens. If you don’t want to let them out to free range in your space, you can at least pick some treats for them.
The following weeds are well-loved by chickens:
- Plantain
- Dandelion, leaves and flowers
- Chickweed
- Clover
- Lambs Quarters
- Chicory
This list of perennial weeds make an excellent source of nutritious, cheap chicken feed!
10. Feed Kitchen Scraps
Wilted lettuce, mushy berries, stale bread, unappetizing leftovers… don’t let this food make its way to the trash can! Feed it to your chickens as a snack. Giving your flock the weekly kitchen scraps can put a big dent in your chicken feed costs.
For a complete list of good and bad chicken snacks, read our post: Chicken Treats: What’s Hot, What’s Not
Do you have an article like this for rabbits?
I don’t have one yet! We do a lot of the same things to save money on rabbit food, like feeding her veggie scraps and weeds from the yard. Haven’t written a post on it yet though!
Great tips! Definitely going to have to give some of these a try. 🙂
I’ve been meaning to do research on fermenting and making my own blends. Thanks for the links!
I have taught my kids to give our “girls” untreated lawn trimmings and weeds. They also get kitchen scraps. If cabbage or something in the garden has a lot of foliage I will usually pull a couple off if all they have had is chicken feed. I havealso paced weeding so the “girls” have weeds for days.
Love your very informative site, I have six girls that give me enough eggs to share everyday. I would really hate to lose my chickens…Gretchen, I know you are a dog child, but I will break your living neck if you kill another of Nana’s chickens!
Thank you for the compliment Carmelita! I hope your chickens are safe from Gretchen! 🙂 🙂
We also sweep up yard clippings when we mow. We don’t use chemicals, so that’s important, therefore our yard is full of various weeds. Hey, they are all green and that’s fine by us. So when we mow, we sweep up greens from different sections and throw them to the chickens. They love scratching through a pile of fresh clipped yard grass/weeds. As a bonus, you sometimes sweep up some grasshoppers or crickets. Now that is fun to watch!!
What a great idea!! We toss grass clippings into the coop as well, the birds love it!
Hi! I live in an apartment but desperately want to have a chicken. Say that my landlord is ok with it, would it be a safe/happy environment to keep her INDOORS? I know this may be an outrageous and silly question but I really would love your advice.
Hi Rheya,
Chickens are really happiest when they live with other chickens and have access to the outdoors. If you were able to get two chickens and had a fenced outdoor space that they could go every day, then they would love that!
We run a charity garden here in the uk, we supliment our chuck food from local stors, they save the od food, we collect, mix with chuck corn feed as a mash, storg get tax relief, by donating to charity..
I used to work at a diner, and we were allowed to bring our own ‘Chicken Buckets’ while on shift, and drop in anything we felt was suitable. It cut down on the waste the restaurant threw away, and my chickens used to go nuts when they saw my car in the driveway after a shift. On busy days I had a 3 gal bucket that was pretty much full.