Our chickens and ducks free range, so they’re always looking for tasty snacks. We finally created our compost heap a couple of weeks ago, and they love it. They pick stuff out of there we wouldn’t have guessed they’d seek out (like sweet pepper seeds and scraps), and when the gate is open, they scratch in it like there’s no tomorrow.
Our big drake, Ty, took pieces of pineapple rind from the compost pile and dropped them into the ducks’ pool. Maybe he was hoping the water would soften the rinds, but they just sank to the bottom. That didn’t deter him, though – he kept carrying the pineapple scraps from the pile to the pool until there were about five rinds in there. We felt kind of bad for him, so we brought crushed pineapple out for the ducks later…no takers.
The chickens are so enthusiastic about scratching in the pile that it’s usually flattened and scattered out several feet from its original site by the evening, which is fine – we just rake it back into a pile again. It’s a win-win situation: the pile gets aerated, and the chickens and ducks eat scraps and bugs (and it’s free entertainment for everyone). Nice!