Backyard Chickens | Homestead
Last year, we purchased baby chicks for our “easter” celebration. To be honest, it was just as much for me as it was for the kiddos. Come on, they are so fluffy and adorable, I turn to mush. AJ and I had backyard chickens in college at University of California, Davis, but we acquired those chickens when they were a year old and they were not particularly friendly. We were excited for the prospect of our kiddos having chickens to learn about the responsibility of caring for animals and to understand where some of our food comes from. The ladies, as we call them, have become a part of our family.
Primarily, we got chickens for supply of fresh eggs, there is nothing quite like fresh eggs, if eggs are your thing. But as we’ve had the chickens for a over year now, the ecological role they play is becoming more and more apparent. On our tiny homestead, there presence has allowed us to create more of a closed loop or circular system, instead of byproducts or wastes being disposed of, much of our waste is moving through a loop.
An “open loop” system creates waste or byproducts for which there is no use. A closed loop system is when the product can be used in other ways. As an example, when we burn wood in the winter, the wood ash doesn’t go in the trash, we use it in our compost, the garden beds and we use it in the chicken coop for their dust bathing. The chickens have helped us achieve a more closed loop system, here’s how.
Food Waste
AJ and I have become increasingly aware of our food waste as we’ve embarked on a low waste journey, our chickens and their byproducts have become an integral part of reducing waste and living more sustainably. We started with a outdoor compost bin and created a vermicompost (earthworm) bin in the basement for the winter months. We still end up generating a good amount of food waste, from scraps and things not eaten at the dinner table, but now our “extras” go to the chickens and come back to us in the form their eggs.
Food waste you can feed chickens:
bread, in moderation, can be fed to your chickens, but avoid moldy bread.
cooked meat, cut into small pieces.
corn, raw, cooked, or dried corn.
fruits with a few exceptions, most fruits are fine, apples, berries, and melons.
grains, like rice, wheat, and other grain.
oatmeal, a family favorite.
peas
vegetables – most cooked or raw vegetables are okay ie, broccoli, carrots (cooked or shredded), cabbage, chard, cucumbers, kale, lettuce, pumpkins, spinach, squash, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes.
Food waste you can’t feed chickens:
salt. a little salt won’t hurt but avoid feeding them too much salt.
processed foods
raw potato peels, especially when they turn green from exposure to the sunlight, contain the alkaloid solanine, which is toxic. sweet potatoes and sweet potato skins do not contain solanine and are safe to feed to your chickens.
garlic, onions won’t harm your chickens, but they give the eggs an undesirable taste.
avocado skins and pits contain persin, a fungicidal toxin that can be fatal to chickens. instead save avocado skins and pits for dyeing.
spoiled or rotten foods.
coffee grinds, but your garden beds and house plants would love them
chocolate contains theobromine, which can be toxic to birds.
raw meat can lead to cannibalism.
Eggs
Their eggs not only provide us with breakfast but we use their eggshells (a byproduct) to make compost tea to nourish our indoor plants especially in the winter. Boil a gallon of water and add 10-20 cleaned eggs shells. Let them sit overnight, strain and pour directly onto the plants. For our garden, we ground saved eggshells and mix them straight into the garden soil as fertilizer, providing calcium, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
We save our eggshells by rinsing them and placing them in an open container to dry out. When the container is full, we smash them up to fit more in. Then we grind them up and mix or till them into the soil in the fall or early spring, as it takes several months for eggshells to break down. You can even place some at the bottom of your planting hole beneath your seed or starter. In the past we’ve even started our garden seeds straight into the eggshells and planted them out when ready.
Our chickens not only provide food and companionship, pest control in the summer and help us reduce food waste year round. They help us use and reuse what would have once regarded as waste to give back to the soil to support it and to help close our loop and reduces our ecological burden. Do you have chickens or want chickens in the near future?
