chickens can and should eat<\/a> all sorts of insects like flies, worms, crickets, grubs and more.<\/p>\nBugs provide essential protein, vitamins and minerals. Plus, insect-eating provides enrichment for chickens and allows them to engage in natural foraging behaviors.<\/p>\n
Of all the insects chickens love, flies are one of their favorites. Easy to catch and full of protein, flies make the perfect on-the-go snack for chickens. Houseflies and bluebottle flies are plump, slow-moving targets – like chicken candy!<\/p>\n
Flies also reproduce rapidly, providing a constant replenishing supply of snacks.<\/p>\n
And since flies themselves eat waste and manure, they convert inedible substances into nutritious bug protein! It’s a win-win for chickens and their humans.<\/p>\n
Insects like flies and worms can provide up to 30% of a chicken’s nutritional needs. So be sure to offer your flock opportunities to engage their natural insect hunting abilities.<\/p>\n
Let them scratch and peck for bugs, cultivate compost piles full of larvae, and sprinkle tasty mealworm treats.<\/p>\n
Your ladies will repay you with vigorous good health and bountiful eggs!<\/p>\n
Just be sure to avoid potentially toxic insects, and don’t feed bait shop creepy crawlies. Otherwise, any insect bounty your flock can hunt down will provide healthy nutrition and fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I was tending to my flock one sunny afternoon, I watched in amusement as one of my hens snatched a fly right out of the air with lightning quick reflexes. Her sisters hurried over, clucking excitedly, hoping she’d share her crunchy snack. That got me wondering – can chickens eat flies and other insects? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1859,"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/1859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chickenrise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}