http://metanoia4life.blogspot.com/2009/06/egg-shells-with-mimi.html#links

And while they are small, toss in a stunned moth or large grasshopper, sit back and watch “chicken football” – it’s country entertainment!

A slice of whole wheat bread soaked in milk is a really healthy snack for the chickens. We give ours all manner of food scraps and even get free food waste from our local co-op grocery store. They love it! We keep the compost pile in their area so they are often on it pecking around, scratching and pooping right into the compost heap. When we empty out the coop the soiled straw goes right into the compost as well.

Let’s see, what else? if you have a garden you’ll need to keep the chickens away from them because they love loose soil and will scratch right where you’ve planted everything, ruining your crops. They eat grass though, so that’s actually one really good way of keeping your grass “mowed”.

They need dust baths fairly often too, so make sure you’ve given them access to some dry dirt they can shake around in on a regular basis. I also supplement their diet with a commercial feed and I make my own chicken scratch with rolled oats, millet, wheat berries, and any other grains I can see they like. That’s one way we get them into their coop/run when we want them in there though. They know the sound of the seeds falling and they all rush to the area where the we throw the scratch, so we throw it in the coop when we want them in there!

They’re all really nice chickens so far, and lay pretty consistantly. We can’t wait until our new chickens start laying as well. Hope that was some good info for you.

We just started raising chickens too! Ours are a little over 6 weeks old now. We love them! We kept ours inside until just about a week ago. we gradually left them outside a little longer each day and would bring them in at night. They spent their first night in the coop 2 nights ago and are now living in their coop and chicken run full time. After reading Debra’s comment about not leaving them in the coop I am a little worried. We have 4 big dogs. I don’t know if I can trust them not to eat my chickens if we let them roam free. We let the chickens out every day while we are in the backyard to supervise. So far the dogs have been pretty good. They are very curious about them. One of our dogs enjoys eating their poop! Discusting! I don’t know what they would do if we were not back there watching. Does anyone have any tips about getting your dogs to leave your chickens alone?

I am learning a lot from the comments. Thanks for posting about this!

If you want to see our chicks here is the link to my blog:
http://mezzellfamily.blogspot.com/