chickens eating habits

[hotblondie22]

what does a chicken eat?

[New Forester]

Usually they are fed grain and grain-based pelleted feed. However, they will also eat food scraps -- in my experience, almost any human left-overs apart from orange peel. If given the chance they are savage carnivores, eating insects, worms, spiders, snails, woodlice etc, as well as larger things like mice, lizards and small birds -- basically anything they can subdue and swallow. I've fed them chopped up squirrels and rats (caught by the cat), which they got very excited about indeed. It did look odd, a nice matronly old hen running triumphantly along with a little hand crosswise in her beak. All this brought a wry smile to my face when I saw the label on a box of organic eggs: "These eggs are from hens fed a vegetarian diet". How cuddly! But what gory titbits did they eat on their own account...? ("Chicken" really ought to mean just the young ones, but nowadays it seems to cover what used to be called domestic fowl, of whatever age).