I was a little enthusiastic buying lettuces, and ended up getting more when I still had some in the fridge. Oops. No worries, the chickens need some greens too. I chopped up the spinach and romain to make it easier for the chickens to eat. Sometimes I will make a hanging bundle so they are able to tear off small chunks themselves, but spinach is easier to just chop. I layered the ingredients, starting with an apple that had a large worm hole. I cut out the decayed part for the compost bin, but chopped the rest. Then in went the spinach, then the romain.

The chickens saw me coming with the bowl and made excited clucks.When I flipped over the bowl in the chicken run, the apples were on top, which I think was a nice turn out. The hens appreciated it.

By the next day it was almost all gone, just the largest pieces of romaine remained.

We recently went on a three-day trip, and set the chickens up so they could be on their own while we were gone. Well, I noticed the day before we left that they had not been accessing their food in their feeder. Not sure if the cold metal was too much for their feet, or if there was something else going on with the feeder, I set up a supplement hanging feeder for while we were gone. I layered grubblies (since they usually get some daily when I go out), scratch (since it was going to be cold), and their usual organic chicken feed.

The hens had nearly emptied the hanging feeder after three days.

You may notice in the picture above that not only are the detested seeds from the scratch on the ground (see yesterday’s post), but so is a significant amount of pelleted food. Hm. I think my hens have been surviving on dried grubs and cracked corn, enough so that they prefer not to access their regular feed. Busted.