Our girls are 5 and 6 years old and still laying almost every day. What do you consider old? Some of their eggs are bigger than extra large eggs that we get from our corn feeding farmer (we only have 3 chickens currently and have to top up our egg supply).

We're getting more too in a couple of weeks.

Scraps from the table. I keep a big bucket in the kitchen, they get all the carrot peelings, apple cores... pretty much anything you would throw into the compost.

I while ago I had left some rice soaking too long and it smelled 'yuck'. I put it in the compost pile... then when I came back later, the chickens and the dogs were eating it... YUCK. I waited for someone to get sick but no one seemed worse for the wear at all.

I should've known better though... all the animals seem to love the compost pile.

In the summer I don't worry to much about feeding them if they've got lots of free range time... we put them away every night or on days that we notice the hawks are doing a lot of hunting out back (probably when they have babies).

In the winter I top up their food with some cooked rice... but not too much because it really is just 'filler'.

Try throwing a whole fish out and see what they do. Does your dh clean up the gizzards when they're not eaten? If he leaves them, I bet they will be gone the next day.

We have not cleaned out the chicken pen in 6 years. We don't have to, the chicken ensure there is nothing left. Even the corn we threw out there... it stays for about a year but by the next year they've got it pecked right down to dust... probably from getting the bugs that try to take up residence in them. (When there's snow, the girls pretty much stay in their 'chick condo'. We leave the door open but they don't seem to like going out in the snow.)

Not laying but free ranging is a little confusing. Maybe they are laying but they're hiding the eggs on you.

They love raisins!!

Hmmmm... melon rind... everything really.

What not to feed: tomato greens and potatoes. Actually they'd have to be starving to eat the tomato greens anyway. One of the few bugs that chickens won't eat is a tomato horn worm. That may be because it's full of tomato greens, which are toxic for chickens.

Gee... kind of brings up the gluten in dairy issue again doesn't it.... chicken are smart enough to avoid eating something that eats something toxic to chickens... but humans just aren't quite there yet.

One day I'm going to try raw, grassfed dairy... just to see...