Poultry Food & Drink
As with houses, there are lots of poultry feeds on the market, many aimed specifically at smallholders. Organic and GM-free feeds are available. In the "olden days", hens may have been fed on scraps, but frankly ours are not impressed. They quite like some wholemeal bread and pasta, and they LOVE sardines. We were told to try to get them to take oil while they were moulting to help with feather regrowth, so we hit on the idea of sardines in sunflower oil. However, this is fed once a week as a treat and received wisdom seems to indicate that poultry perform better if they are fed a properly balanced diet.
We feed our hens Organic Layer Pellets from The Organic Company on an adlib basis. At first, we used mash, which is basically powdered pellets, but changed to pellets because a) the mash tended to get damp, sour and lumpy, and b) our local suppliers keep the pellets in stock, so we don't have to remember to order them in advance. We have two feed hoppers, in separate places but both under cover - if food gets wet, it gets sour and the hens won’t eat it. We also feed about one ounce of organic mixed corn (also from The Organic Company), per hen per day, in the evening. Our hens also, of course, have a varied diet of seeds, slugs, snails, worms, bugs and grass.
Poultry also need access to mixed grit, so we have a grit hopper alongside each feed hopper. The grit is to aid digestion, not to form eggshells.
If your hens don't have access to grass, cabbages and other green forage makes a welcome addition to their diet.
Poultry must always have access to fresh, clean water. We use a galvanised Eltex water feeder, but the hens seem equally happy drinking from puddles, the bird bath, the sheep trough or just about any 'natural' source. Adding garlic to the water is supposed to stop worm infestations but we've not tried this.