Welcome to Modern Agriculture!
It’s the middle of winter. You’re getting very few eggs from your flock, if any at all. With their reproductive systems taking a rest, winter is an important time for them to rebuild their nutrient reserves after finishing an intensive process of growing out new feathers.
But less-than-ideal weather, dormant gardens, and fewer bugs around mean fewer opportunities for chickens to forage, so they’re more susceptible to stress or illness.
You also don’t want to underestimate the power of playtime. A bored chicken could put on excess weight, become more vulnerable to mites and lice, or feel compelled to pick on other chickens just to have something to do.
So how can you help your flock thrive when the days are short and the air is cold? Beyond making sure their coop is properly winterized, it all comes down to diet and exercise. (Yep, just like humans!)
These are the seven things I do for my chickens every winter to keep them healthy and happy.
The healthiest chickens don’t subsist on grains alone. They roam, pull up weeds, and get extra nutrition from the random plants they find in the yard.
But fresh greens are usually hard to come by in winter, so I supplement my chickens’ diet with kitchen scraps (like the odds and ends of our salad ingredients) and damaged greens sourced from local restaurants and grocery stores.
I like to go with nutritionally dense, dark greens like kale, collards, chard, and spinach. These types of leaves (including the lowly weeds in my garden) are an important source of vitamins and minerals for chickens, just as they are for humans.
Another option is giving your chickens the leftover Halloween pumpkins or damaged winter squashes from your pantry. Break them open, toss them into the chicken run, and let the flock have at it.
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Turn feeding time into a little game for chickens who might be cooped up and restless when it’s too snowy or blustery to free-range.
I like to hang a head of cabbage inside the run and let the ladies bop it around like a tether ball. By the end of the day, all I’m left with is a half-eaten stalk and a piece of string.
You can also stuff leafy greens into a suet cage or hanging treat ball and make them work for their food. Keeping chickens busy and curious is key to preventing bored behavior like egg-eating and feather-pecking.
I discovered this little trick by accident one day!
Some people sprout grains for their chickens to take advantage of all the vitamins and minerals made available. But if you feed your flock a whole grain chicken feed or make your own whole grain feed, there are likely quite a few grains flung about in their run which they never get around to eating.
Instead of cleaning up the mess, let Mother Nature do the work. A few days after a rain, all those grains and seeds will sprout themselves—and voilà, instant pasture!
If your chickens don’t have access to pasture, up their protein intake by buying a bale of alfalfa for them to scratch.
Alfalfa can be found at your local feed store with the straw and hay bales. Alfalfa hay cubes and loose alfalfa hay (made for rabbits and other small pets) are available too, if you want to throw a few handfuls inside a small run.
Your chickens will be busy pecking at the alfalfa all winter long, while also getting an excellent fill of protein and fiber.
If you don’t want to deal with hay bales or loose hay, you can reap the same benefits by adding alfalfa pellets (usually sold as rabbit food) to their regular feed.
Release your chickens right after a rain, as all the moisture and disturbance in the ground brings out a buffet of protein-filled worms, grubs, and other delectable bugs that they love to scratch, peck, and devour.
If your winter has been dry or your chickens don’t get many opportunities to graze on pasture, toss them a small handful of dried mealworms or dried soldier fly larvae (aka grubs—my personal favorite since they’re higher in protein and Omega-3s) once a day for their protein fix.
I’ve linked the brands I like below, which are made in North America.
I do this often in winter, mainly because my picky chickens sometimes won’t eat dried legumes… but give them a steaming hot bowl of cooked lentils or split peas on a cold winter day, and they’re all over it!
Legumes offer some of the highest sources of protein (up to 35 percent for lentils) and they’re inexpensive. (Use my chicken feed calculator to research protein levels for some common grains, seeds, and legumes.)
You can also cook up the more expensive—but very protein-rich—grains like kamut and quinoa, and serve them as a special treat.
If I’m feeling generous, I’ll even share my nine-grain oatmeal with the girls: a feast of triticale, rye, wheat, oats, barley, flax, and spelt. (I buy it in bulk from Azure Standard, which is my favorite place to stock up on my chickens’ grains and seeds so I never run out in winter. They’re an online natural foods co-op that carries many ingredients I can’t find locally.)
Are your chickens anything like mine? These ladies hate walking in the snow.
If they wake up to several inches of snow on the ground, they huddle together in the coop and refuse to come out, even when I try to tempt them with a steaming hot bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with grubs.
Unfortunately, they have to get out and do what chickens do—peck, scratch, and dust bathe—because extended periods of inactivity and boredom could lead to bad behavior among the flock.
After a snow storm, we try to clear a path through the yard as soon as we can so the chickens aren’t confined to their coop. We also spread wooden planks, plywood scraps, log rounds, and branches (and sometimes big pieces of cardboard if that’s all we’ve got) throughout the yard for them to perch on and get out of the snow. This lets them get a little exercise and raises morale until they can see the ground again.
If you live in an area that gets snow, make sure to provide a temporary spot where your chickens can dust bathe. (Yep, they still need to do it, even when the ground is frozen.) An easy DIY is to fill a large wash tub with some sand or dirt, and place it in a sheltered area so your chickens have a place to dust bathe out of the rain.
Winter might feel long and cold, but these tried-and-true tips will keep your chickens healthy and happy all season!
This post updated from an article that originally appeared on January 25, 2013.
Linda Ly
I'm a plant lover, passionate road-tripper, and cookbook author whose expert advice and bestselling books have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, HGTV, and Food & Wine. The Route 66 Cookbook is my latest book. Garden Betty is where I write about modern homesteading, farm-to-table cooking, and outdoor adventuring—all that encompass a life well-lived outdoors. After all, the secret to a good life is... Read more »
