Chicken Mash

Chicken mash, layers mash, poultry mash… are ‘tasty’ chicken ‘mash’ type feeds that you can make up at home, using left over kitchen vegetable scraps, corn, pellets and bread - not to be confused with chicken & mash ‘home cooking’ recipes for humans!

The only problem with making chicken mash at home; is that if you have a compost heap, you’ll have to decide which vegetable and kitchen scraps are ’saved’ for the chicken mash recipe mixture, and which are going to be put on the compost heap!

But then again, I suppose you’ll be putting the chicken manure on the compost heap, so there’s no need to be stindgy with your chicken mash ingredients - it all ends up in the same place in the end after all!

Several of the chicken keeping books mention how to make chicken mash, although one book in particular that I keep mentioning since getting hold of a copy - Keeping Poultry And Rabbits On Scraps, takes chicken mash making and recipes to all new levels!

Obtaining ‘free’ chicken feed is almost a ‘mantra’ in Keeping Poultry And Rabbits On Scraps - a chicken mash made from household kitchen scraps is one of the basic chicken feed staples it suggests.

Also the amount of chicken mash that you can create is obviously restricted to the amount of kitchen vegetable and bread waste that you generate. The book suggests that you get friends and neigbours to save suitable vegetable and bread waste for your chicken mash for you…

I don’t know how this would ’sit’ with most people, but we’ve taken the plunge and asked our parents to save their vegetable and bread scraps for our chicken mash. Our parents get a steady supply of eggs from our chickens, so they are more than happy to assist us in collecting suitable ingredients!

A chicken mash is basically made from ‘minced’ or finely chopped kitchen vegetable waste - peelings and stalks or whatever looks a bit out of date or ropey for human consumption, old stale bread, protein - you can also add meat scraps, corn, stale biscuits, old breakfast cereals etc. I also like to put into the chicken mash some of the chicken’s poultry layer pellets.

A good day we’ve found to make chicken mash is on a Sunday, after a Sunday roast; you can then use the vegetable water that has been used to boil the family vegetables as the base chicken mash ’stock’ and add everything you’ve saved over the week to the pot, bring to the boil and then gently simmer for a while.

With experience, I like to simmer the chicken mash mixture so it turns into a stodgy mash. This way it’s not too ‘runny’ and therefore less messy when feeding the mash to the chickens during the week following.

So what’s suitable ‘vegetable wise’ for putting into your chicken mash?

Well, according to the Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps book, everything in moderation can be used…

But for a rough guide, see below;

Artichoke
Beans - broad, dwarf, harricot, runner etc
Beet
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrots
Corn
Kale
Leeks
Lettuce
Maize
Mangolds
Onions
Peas
Potatoes
Spinach
Sunflower seeds
Swedes
Turnips

As for the other chicken mash ingredients;

Bread
Stale Cake
Stale Biscuits
Left-over Cooked Rice
Left-over Cooked Pasta
Old Breakfast Cereals
Left-over Meat

You then feed the chickens the chicken mash along with their usual chicken food / pellet diet.

I like to keep the chickens in their run first thing in the morning whilst they ear their chicken feed pellets, corn and chicken mash - to makesure that they’ve had enough of what I want them to eat before they can then start looking for ‘extras’.

I then let them have the run of the garden so they can forage for whatever else they can find and feed on the grass shoots.

There you have it, chicken mash may be a easy way of supplimenting your chicken’s feed using ‘free’ methods - free because chicken mash is made from ingredients that you would otherwise had thrown away or put straight on the compost heap.

Chicken Mash