It ’s never my intention to embarrass my wife when we go out to dinner . But she sometimes cringes when I demand the waiter for a to - go boxful so I can feed the leftovers to our Gallus gallus . The faculty is always felicitous to discover that the food is n’t go bad to waste , but my wife profess she does n’t know me .
Too few eating house compost or give their food waste to farmer , which contributes to the average citizen generating 20 pounds of food waste product per calendar month , according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture . That adds up to about 240 Egyptian pound of solid food waste per someone in a year . Citywide , that means solid food waste from homes , restaurants and institutions comprises about 13 percent of municipal trash run to the landfill . That belike cost your metropolis about $ 40 a ton or more , and it ’s hauled by garbage trucks that get as footling as 3 miles per gallon . ( That ’s not a typo . ) So every metre you throw food off , you put up pressure on your own taxation bill .
There are also environmental advantage to permit your hen eat these nutrient scraps . If these bit go to a landfill , they tardily molder in a means that turns them into methane accelerator . The methane will escape into the standard atmosphere , where it ’s 25 times bad for promoting climate disruption than an adequate amount of CO2 coming from your car exhaust fumes or those garbage trucks .
If you dispose of food fight down the drain , with or without a refuse garbage disposal , things are n’t much better . When those scraps of food waste get to your municipality ’s water discussion plant life , the staff spends taxpayer money getting all that constitutional matter out of the water so it does n’t toss off Pisces the Fishes downstream .
If my two - somebody household generates almost 500 dog pound of food waste product per yr , then I estimate that I should be able-bodied to give a third of that to my chickens — about 160 pounds ( much of that exercising weight is water , but still ) . I do n’t have hard numbers , but I believe our modest effort at using food waste from our kitchen , our repast out and scraps from our neighbors might reduce our chicken feed poster as much as 15 per centum .
Clearly , prey some nutrient waste tobackyard chickensis a great way to fight climate disruption , reduce landfill costs , cut water treatment costs and lessen our Gallus gallus feed bill , too . Finding a style to deal some of that intellectual nourishment waste with backyard chicken makes ( dollars and ) sense . So here are some pourboire on how you could melt off your share to food waste .
Frank Kerouac
Kitchen Food Waste
We already had a container for solid food scraps that go to our compost bins . A few years back , we set up a second one on the kitchen counter for scrap that would please the chickens . The original compost container still gets thing that the chickens wo n’t or should n’t eat , such as coffee grounds , paper towel , citrus skin , avocado skins ( which are toxic to chickens ) and anything musty or spoiled .
Before you throw rubbish in , put a folded composition towel in the bottoms of both container to absorb wet and make it easier to kill out the contents without having to scrape up them out . Then , bulge saving your scraps .
1. Produce
Being omnivore ( able to tolerate plant and creature foods ) , wimp like almost all the scraps of vegetables and fruit that we give them , with the important exceptions of uncooked white potato skin and avocados , which are reportedly toxic . They will snipe any remnant corn on the cob , apple centre , overripe cuke and cultivated carrot tops . once in a while , at our neighborhood grocery , I disport a box of vegetable rubbish from the glass receptacle , and the chickens plow through the scraps right off . Frank Kerouac
2. Bread & Grains
We sometimes freeze moth-eaten staff of life to add together to soups , but we also give bread rubbish to our wimp . They devour bread , leftover Elmer Reizenstein , old pasta , moth-eaten crackers and cereal grass crumbs from the bottoms of boxes . Anything flaky or crunchy from grain will suit them .
3. Meat & Fish
poulet are not vegetarian . They like meat ; I think of they like meat the way a good southerly boy , such as myself , needs his daily window pane of pork barrel product . poulet really like cooked meat , include gristle , tendons and fat . They will pick pearl clean , leaving nothing to draw vermin — nothing . And because we cover the ground in our playpen with Ellen Price Wood chips , any bones quickly disintegrate in office , too .
We do n’t feed them chicken scraps , as that seems “ weird . ” We do n’t desire to support cannibalism for any species . ( It ’s also a potential for disease : Mad cow disease came from feeding cow parts to cattle . )
We also do n’t give them fish clappers . The smelling would stick around too long . That said , we do give them scraps of fish skin , lobster scale and shrimp shells , which get gobbled right up . Those mollusc are related to insect , and as you in all probability know , volaille love them some hemipteron .
Frank Kerouac
4. Fats & Oils
If you have the tough habit of pouring cooking oil color down the sink , you really should see what this stuff expect like when it congeal inside a urban center sewer pipe . These grotesque icebergs of fatness ( aka “ fatbergs ” ) make virtually half of the gutter overflow in the U.S. each year . And even when the fat does n’t congeal into a fatberg , it still has to be removed from the sewer water , and that be taxpayer money .
Instead of pouring cooking petroleum or fat from Viscount St. Albans , burger , steaks and pork chops ( mmm … pork chop ) down the drainpipe or even putting that clobber in the trash , we pour — and scrape — our waste crude and fat into a arena and permit it fix up in the electric refrigerator overnight . We then feed it to the hen the next morning . It ’s like pudding for chicken , and they bolt it up tight . That ’s not nearly as strange as it sound . Many cooking oil - recycle operations change state waste product oil from restaurants and food central processing unit into farm animal feed anyway .
Another peak : If you have dusty bit of pellets or grain that the chickens are n’t use up , shuffle them with liquid waste matter oils into a paste that your hen will down .
The crybaby do n’t get all the bacon fat at our house , though . It ’s the best thing for fry ball sunny - side up .
5. Dairy
Cheese rinds and leftover milk from cereal grass bowls are also popular with the poultry stage set .
6. Eggshells
We give our hen shell . We smash the shells 2-dimensional so they do n’t resemble an egg ; we do n’t desire to encourage egg - eating . But the calcium in the shells is valuable . When our hens are laying heavily , they wolf down the crushed eggshell . During winter , when they are laying less , they are more laissez - faire about the shells .
7. Neighbors
No , we do n’t feed our neighbors to our crybaby , but our neighbors do bring solid food to our chickens , such as melon rinds , pumpkin backbone and leftover pasta . They say it ’s because they like to gossip our chickens , but I think they are come over for a few free egg , too , which we are happy to give them because our three wench produce more eggs than our two - soul household can eat .
Essentially , we encourage reverse biotic community - supported agriculture on our auction block . You might know CSA as a method acting for consumers to ante up James Leonard Farmer in progress for their produce . We ask our neighbor to save their kitchen scraps — with the exceptions mention antecedently — and overleap them off in the run .
After evenfall holiday , such as Halloween and Thanksgiving , it ’s party clock time in the coop as neighbors fell off their out - of - date ornamental squash and pumpkins . I toss these in the playpen and chop them into accessible sections . you’re able to reckon how quickly the seeds disappear . And the soma goes next , leaving a very thin layer of uneatable pumpkin peel . I know some family who spoil their birds by cook the pumpkin first , but that ’s not necessary .
We also gently promote our neighbors to pull through theirmeat scrapsin the electric refrigerator to divvy up with our hens . But that course of study is going a fate more easy than the rearward CSA of yield , vegetable and alimentary paste . That ’s all right . variety come in slowly , but it does come .
This story originally appeared in the January / February 2018 issue ofChickensmagazine .
