Rehabilitating production hens onto organic homestead

We picked up 5 hens almost 2 years oldabout a month and a half ago. I have been giving them organic feed and scratch regularly up I till last week when I started weaning them off feed to get them to forage more. It seemed to backfire.

They adjusted within a day or two after recieving  them and were eating a lot! Both grain and foraging, exploring more and more each day. We have a very bio diverse property abundant with all the food they could eat. They are eating about 1/2cup/day/hen of grain and getting 1-2 c of scratch per day Between them. When I took the grain away during the day and gave them 1cup of scratch to share, they seemed to lay around and not forage much. Completely opposite of what I thought, take feed away- they forage more. Not the case.

Anyone else gone through something similiar? Any suggestions or recommendations?

I picked up a dozen hens about the same time.  They were barn hens, living in a heated space with no roosts.  When I got them here they promptly decided to molt and I'm starting to get eggs now.  I had to teach them to roost and I've found they don't forage well, though they're getting better.

I've had the same experience.  If there's no food they seem to get anxious and just hang around the feeder.  Once fed they'll forage.  I'm hoping that gets better with time, too.

Maybe they could be weaned off the grain slowly by giving a little less each day.  If that works try doing the same with the scratch.

Hey Ian, welcome to Permies!

I think there could be a few things going on with these hens. I believe it’s likely these production hens may have never seen grass & forbs before and don’t know it is. It might be possible to train them to identify a lawn/yard as food stuffs. Maybe mix in a few handfuls of grasses and other green things into their grain, they might learn to identify it as food. I read an article not too long ago about a guy who rescued some beef cows from a cafo feed lot. When he brought them home to his farm and turned them out onto pasture, the cows walked around and didn’t eat anything. They did not identify grass as food. They had only known a life of eating out of bins and having grain brought to them. I thought it was amazing that an herbivore having evolved for eons grazing, then domesticated by humans while grazing, had lost the trait to identify grasses as food.

Something else I think might be at play is genetics. Traits and instincts can be unintentionally, or even deliberately lost through breeding, like if a breeder is seeking to remove a trait such as aggressiveness for example. Like beef cattle bred to put weight on their frame as fast as possible with grain, a lot of production hens are bred to lay 300+ eggs per year.  In selecting and breeding for high egg production, it is possible that foraging instincts have been diminished or lost entirely, without cause for alarm as a ration will be fed to them. I see you mentioned when you took away the grain they laze about laying around and not foraging much. That’s the life they used to live, producing eggs and laying around. I don’t think all is lost, and maybe it’s more nurture rather than nature as to why they don’t forage much, only knowing a life of food brought to them and the instinct to forage is there if they get a little encouragement and practice. I’ve never met a chicken that didn’t chase down and eat bugs or scratch in the grasses and soil looking for bugs. Have you seen your hens eat bugs?

What a dilemma!
Our rescues have always taken to the foraging, preferring it to feed or scraps.
I would scavenge more dumpster produce but they prefer bugs,  etc.
I have even buried scraps in order to get them interested in them.
Maybe spread the feed out,  so they have to "forage" to get it?

So, I guess the amount of additional time they needed to start foraging was one day.  When I let them out this morning they still had food, but I filled the trough up anyway.  10 minutes later they were scattered, eating grass and weeds and scratching like they've been doing it all their lives.