Chickens will eat anything

[Dame]

We give our chickens most of our kitchen waste along with their food.
People who have kept chickens for years tell me "chickens will eat anything"
I find this to be true excepting for tobacco, coffee/tea grounds, citris/banana peal and onions, however some of the things chickens will eat will kill them.
The list includes live flax plants.  The flax is too stringy for the gizzard to break up, so it stays there and takes up space until the chicken starves.  We are careful the flax we give them does not get a chance to germinate.
Celery, nylon string (the kind off the hay bales) fine wires (the kind in twist ties) can cause the same problems  and the chickens will eat them.  I do not become highly upset loosing an occasional chicken to these hazards, I do mind calling a vet and paying to find out what the problem is if I do not check out the gizzard first.

[opsec]

If you are lucky enough to find a roadkill, toss it in the pen, they will eat that too.

[Atash Hagmahani]

My chickies are picky.

We feed them kitchen scraps, stale leftovers, dandelions, slugs, snails, and other creepy-crawlies, and mixed chicken feed. They really don't like the feed much. They don't like wheat or cracked corn. They don't like bread much.

They seem to like Millet. I keep looking for huge bags of mostly-millet birdseed. They like to run around loose looking for millipedes, seeds, and bugs.

They like rice. I've given them weevily cooked rice before, and they love it. But I'm all out.

[Watcher]

Atash Hagmahani,  if you don't mind my sayings so,  it sounds like you have some very spoilt chickens

Seriously through, in non industrial countries chickens are widely kept precisely because they have such an appetite for bugs.  They help keep vermin down and so help maintain hygiene.  In a situation where there is any deterioration in public services that becomes a very important function.

All the talk of guns and canned goods will be useless in the face of an epidemic of typhus or some such almost forgotten but still terrible disease.

[opsec]

Along the lines of disease prevention, it might be a good idea to go to the vitamin store and stock up on the immune system boosting concoctions they have.

[Watcher]

Along the lines of disease prevention, it might be a good idea to go to the vitamin store and stock up on the immune system boosting concoctions they have.

Completely unscientifically and annecdotally,  i recommend cod liver oil capsules.  (and mega doses of vitamin C when actually ill)

[Lady Lilya]

I also recommend cod liver oil.  But I take it in liquid form because it is much cheaper than capsules.  I buy the one from Carlson in Norway.  Their lemon flavor is very pleasant.  Nothing fishy about it at all.  And my toddler loves it (and cries when he finishes his daily dose because he wants more).

[oscar615]

I do mind calling a vet and paying to find out what the problem is if I do not check out the gizzard first.

How do you check a gizzard?  And what can you do about it if you find a problem?

[opsec]

Guinea Fowl have a particular fondness for ticks. That could be a multi-use bird to have around.

[Dame]

The gizzard os a lime sized muscular organ just below the right breast bone in birds.  They eat grit which stays in the gizzard as the grinding substance instead of teeth.  The gizzard then kneeds the contents, food and gravel/grit together to machinate the food before it continues to the stomach.  If a bird eats something the gizzard cannot grind with grit then the gizzard fills with the residue and the bird starves.  Of you find, remove and cut open the gizzard to examine the contents this problem is easy to identify.  The gizzard, cleaned, is one of the organs contained in some giblet packages.

[Watcher]

Guinea Fowl have a particular fondness for ticks. That could be a multi-use bird to have around.

They do well in the Southern States of the USA.  My uncle keeps them on his property and they do a great job of keeping the bugs down.