If your flock is hungry for something deliciously nourishing but you’re not sure how to begin, let me help! Crafting your own hand-mixed laying hen feed is incredibly easy and so much fun. I’ll share my favorite EASY whole grain chicken scratch recipes:
Whole Grain Chicken Scratch
For all the talk about only feeding hens carefully balanced commercial layer pellets, hens themselves seem to think differently. There is heavy online implication that you must feed hens commercial feed for at least 90% of their diets forever. Yet many chicken keepers will tell you a refreshing switch-up in a flock’s diet results in them suddenly laying more eggs! Why? Because hens get bored with commercial feed and only eat a minimum of it when they know better foods exist. Any time food intake is reduced, so is laying.
Have You Noticed?
As soon as real, whole foods, seeds, and grains are available, the hens eat greedily. And the nest boxes are soon filled because the nutritious new food “treat” replenished vital nutrients and trace minerals her body may have been slightly low on. This is partly because she was only nibbling at the commercial pellets, not eating as heartily as she could.
The Proof is in the Pasture
Have you ever let hens out to graze after an extended time of being locked in the coop and run? Perhaps it was a rainy week or there were too many predators about so the girls stayed confined for their safety. But that one day – or even three hours – of free ranging caused an absolute explosion in the nest box. Hens who weren’t laying as much suddenly left you an egg. Others laid a brighter, prettier, or more heavily speckled egg than they have in a while. And they laid so many! We’ve ALL experienced this. The truth is right before us: our omnivorous hens need a little variation in their diet. A smorgasbord of fresh plant, seed, and whole grains in addition to fats and proteins from insects are a great way to keep her intake of egg-boosting nutrients high.
Scratch Blends Can (Somewhat) Mimic Free Ranging
If she can’t be out in the pasture, we can bring plant-based goodness to her. I’m a huge fan of feeding homemade scratch blends that I rotate frequently and giving my hens hand-picked garden weeds. (I also give my speckled egg layers meat trimmings, which you can read about in my article on increasing speckling on eggs.)
Whole Grain Chicken Scratch Recipes:
My favorite chicken scratch is 1 part whole oats to 1 part black oil sunflower seeds. That’s it. Both are naturally non-GMO and truly good foods for laying hens. No fancy recipes needed. But since I know hens eat better when they are offered a wide variety of foods with frequent switch ups as ingredients are purchased and then used up, here are my favorite whole grain chicken scratch recipes:
Can’t Free Range? Opt for Homemade Scratch!
The wintertime kill-off of greens and bugs is hard on hens. They miss the complex buffet of foods available while free ranging during the warm months. I find whole grain chicken scratch recipes to be especially useful in winter to help the girls come back into lay.
Breeders: homemade scratch and 1 tsp per hen of raw beef trimmings twice a week are a trick I have used for a couple years to get my hens laying January hatching eggs. It really helps!
Nourishing, Egg Producing Whole Foods
The scratch recipes I share are little more than me mixing together wholesome, real foods that chickens can digest. If you don’t have one ingredient, skip it! The hens will appreciate any new treat or tidbit you offer. A little bit of variety to keep her eating well is more important than fretting over the perfect balance of feed ratios every day.
What if My Hens Won’t Eat Something?
If your girls turn their beaks up at one seed or legume, don’t fret. They are whole foods and all of them will sprout when exposed to ground moisture. (Cracked corn, raisins, and craisins will not of course but the hens won’t be leaving any of these behind!) Once the seed has swollen and began to develop a tiny root, the nutrition profile of it has changed to become even more nutrient-packed. Your hens will be scratching and pecking for these scrumptious tidbits of microgreen goodness! Even when scratch is scattered and uneaten for a time, the sprouting seeds offer yet another fantastic dietary intake for your flock.
Did You Know? Many hens don’t like the dry yellow peas some grain-based chicken feeds contain so they deliberately ignore them until they swell and sprout!
Worried About the 10% Treat Rule?
If you’re worried about giving your hens too much scratch, check out our article on Homemade Pellet + Scratch Feed blends. These recipes are perfect for beginners and guarantee a balanced 90% pellet/crumble and 10% scratch mix. Scoops of the resulting blends look so gorgeous in the chicken feed hopper! All of the colorful scratch mixes above have a pellet + scratch recipe to go along with them at the bottom of each page.
The Experience You Need in an Emergency
As a four-time hurricane survivor, and having survived Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 with my chickens and quails, I am familiar with feed stores emptied by panic buying. When there is not a single commercial crumble in sight, the ability to craft a healthy emergency feed from your own grain bins and pantry is a fantastic skill to have! Making just a few scratch recipes will let you know what your hens like, what they don’t, and what ingredients are worth keeping on-hand. It’s nice knowing you can face inclement weather, natural disasters, another lockdown, or worse with your flock remaining well-fed.
Let Me Know Your Hen’s Favorite!
I’m always up for trying a new scratch blend so if you find something your hens relish, please let us all know in the comments below!
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