Backyard chickens need a complete chicken feed suited to their age and whether they are laying. Kitchen scraps are a small extra. A flock that fills up on bread, grain and leftovers can miss essential nutrients even when every bird looks well fed.
For laying hens, the everyday starting point is a complete layer feed. Chicks and growing birds need their own feed, so do not give a mixed-age flock one bag of layer pellets without advice on feeding them separately.
Questions answered in this guide
Can chickens live on kitchen scraps and whatever they find outside?
No. Scratching for insects and pecking at plants are valuable activities, but you cannot tell what nutrients each bird has found. Keep suitable complete feed available when hens free-range.
RSPCA Australia recommends roughly 90% balanced commercial feed, with scraps, scratch grain and other extras making up about 10% of daily intake. That is the whole treat allowance, not 10% vegetables plus another allowance for grain and mealworms.
A useful household rule is to have one person give the day's extras. Otherwise, the breakfast crust, the lunchtime handful of grain and the children's afternoon treats can quietly become most of the meal.
Which kitchen scraps can chickens eat?
| Food | What to do |
|---|---|
| Fresh vegetable scraps | Broccoli, cabbage, carrot, pumpkin and zucchini are examples. Offer a small amount alongside the normal diet and remove leftovers promptly. |
| Scratch grain | Treat it as an extra, even if the birds prefer it to pellets. A bag of mixed grain is not automatically a complete feed. |
| Bread and cooked leftovers | Do not make these a daily meal. Leave salty, sugary or fatty leftovers out of the chicken scrap bowl. |
| Avocado, chocolate, caffeine or alcohol | Keep these away from the flock. |
| Raw dried beans or green potato peel | Do not feed them. |
| Mouldy food | Discard it. Chickens are not a way to salvage food that has gone off. |
These vegetable examples appear in AkoVet’s poultry treats guidance. The avoid list draws on RSPCA's advice on unsafe scraps and Agriculture Victoria's poultry feeding guidance. It is not an exhaustive list of every plant or ingredient: if a leftover contains something you cannot identify, leave it out.
What should I do each morning?
- Replace dirty water and check the drinker works. An apparently full container is no help if the outlet is blocked or the birds cannot reach it.
- Check the complete feed. Keep it dry and remove spoiled material rather than pouring fresh pellets over a damp layer.
- Watch the birds eat. If one hen keeps being pushed away, add another feeding point so she has somewhere else to go.
Clean water needs to remain available throughout the day. Check again in hot weather; do not use an average daily drinking figure as a limit on what you provide.
What about scraps in the afternoon and food at night?
Give only a small serving of fresh scraps that the flock will finish quickly. NSW's backyard poultry guidance suggests limiting fresh vegetable scraps to what birds can consume within about 30 minutes. Pick up leftovers instead of leaving them to rot in the run.
During the evening coop check, clear spilled food and put stored feed back into a closed, rodent-resistant container. Keep a separate scoop with the feed so it is easy for anyone looking after the hens to follow the same routine.
For the rest of your flock's setup, see our chicken coops, runs and accessories. Food and water access should still work when the hens are inside, rather than depending on someone letting them out first.
