We all love to give our hens treats. Unlike so many others in our lives, chickens are raucously grateful for the smallest offerings. But, I’ve seen a disturbing trend to over-indulgence in the feeding of backyard hens. You can make your chicken sick – or even kill her – with too many of the wrong treats.

Optimally, a chicken’s diet should be around 16% protein., which is what you get in laying hen pellets. A hen, cranking out an egg day after day, depletes her system of protein and minerals. If you feed her too many carbohydrates you’ll make her fat and weaken what goes on in the reproductive tract. So, as much as your girls are gleeful about cracked corn, don’t feed it. There’s absolutely no reason to. One of the bonuses of keeping chickens is that they turn kitchen scraps and waste into compost. You don’t have to give up on feeding stale bread and leftover spaghetti, but keep it a small portion of their diet.

On the other end of the spectrum, I am especially concerned about all of the people feeding their hens mealworms. A small amount, like a tablespoon a day, is a fine treat. But, people are feeding handfuls. They’re practically feeding their hens pure protein (mealworms are up around 50%) The chicken expert at my local feedstore just told me about hens dying from kidney failure due to being fed mealworms as the main part of their diet. Besides the health dangers, mealworms are very expensive. Yes, it’s good for chickens to eat bugs, bugs they have worked for and found themselves. Bugs that are part of an active life, and one in which the insects are part of other things that the chickens are sorting through and ingesting.

Hulled sunflower seeds are a nice treat – in moderation. They have that extra bit of protein, and also contain good essential fats. My retired girls get about a teaspoon per bird per day. Plenty! Don’t feed the seeds with the shells on, as too many can cause an impacted crop. The sunflower seeds are what I use to call my hens. If you’ve seen my YouTube video, you know how fast my hens come when called. Since they rarely get such treats, when they hear that can shake, they know something very, very special is waiting for them.

But all of this doesn’t mean that you can’t spoil your hens. For chickens like mine that spend the good part of their days in runs, the best thing that you can do is to provide greens. You can simply put weeds and things in their compost pile (I have mine in the run.) Or, to make the greens last and keep them up off of the ground, use a bird suet feeder.

This one is nailed to the roost in the Little Barn. I also have a larger one, than hangs from a chain. It’s big enough to put apple halves and cucumbers in.

Hanging treats like this keeps the greens fresh and clean and keeps the hens busy. It’s the right way to indulge your birds.

Now that the Garden Tour is over, I’d like to let the hens free-range. On Sunday I opened up the pens. Buffy slowly strolled out and looked about. She enjoyed pecking at the grass and drinking from puddles.

The more active Gems quickly went to work in the amongst the new grape vines. They’ve been eyeing that patch through their fence. Once there, mulch and dirt went flying in their search for bugs.

But, the outing was cut short. While Steve and I were standing in the middle of the yard, chatting and enjoying the antics of the hens, a hawk sped out of the woods, and swooped low over the hens. Hawks are that brazen. It was only fifteen feet above them when my arm waving and screeching, and pell-mell running at it, convinced the raptor to give up on it’s planned chicken lunch.

The hens are back to being confined, but I have a few tricks to keep the girls busy and happy. I have a small birch log in the Big Barn run.

Every few days I move it to a new spot. The ground is damp and buggy where the log was, which keeps the girls busy for quite awhile.

I also have a compost bin in the chicken run. It is a circle, with an opening like the letter C. It’s where I put all of my kitchen scraps and garden weeds. The hens eat much of what is tossed there and what isn’t edible they shred into bits. It’s wormy and an endless source of good things to scratch for.

My wild arm-waving worked once, but that hawk is smart enough to catch on that I’m not exactly fast. So, the girls will be kept safely in their pens. I don’t think they’ll mind. The patch of greens in my vegetable garden bolted this week. The chickens will have a field day with it.

The weather couldn’t have been more perfect last Friday for the Concord Museum Garden Tour. Over 500 tickets were sold in advance and many more on the day of the event. It certainly seemed as if every one of them came through my yard! People looked at the chickens. They said hello to the goats.

They marveled at the Beast.

It was a lovely day.

Saturday was not lovely. It rained. It poured. It drizzled. It was cold and damp and miserable. But, still people came.

Sometimes I think that gardens are even more beautiful in the rain. The colors, without the glare of sunshine, are deeper. Water shimmers on rocks and glistens in balls on leaves. After the last visitor drove off, Steve took video of the garden and we put together a rainy day garden tour.

Sunday was overcast, but the chickens didn’t mind at all. As promised, I let them out to free-range.

The garden is fully mature, and it took them a bit of looking to find dirt to scratch in. They wandered about, eyeing the flowers and pecking at the grass. They enjoyed themselves immensely until a hawk swooped low. I hustled the girls back into their secure pens. They’ll get to finish their tour another day.