Kitchen and garden scraps

In short

• Never meat, cured meat, fish, bones or cooked food containing meat for pigs and poultry: disease and the law.
• Never any animal products for ruminants (goats, sheep, cows).
• In the UK and Ireland it is illegal to feed kitchen or catering waste to farmed animals, even meat-free and even to pet pigs and backyard hens. In the US and Canada the rules differ by state and province: check with your state veterinarian or the CFIA.
• Garden leftovers (leaves, weeds, windfalls, roots) are good feed, but no more than a quarter of the ration, introduced gradually.
• Poisonous to all: avocado, raw beans, green potatoes and haulm, mould, yew, hellebore, oleander, cherry laurel.
• The safest rule: animals get only raw plant leftovers that were prepared before they came into the kitchen.

What's inside

Chapters

1. The law: kitchen waste and animals
2. What counts as "garden" and what as "kitchen"
3. Hens, ducks and geese
4. Rabbits
5. Goats and sheep
6. Pigs
7. Poisonous foods and plants by species
8. How to feed leftovers
9. Leftovers and the closed loop
10. Common mistakes
11. Printable checklist

Worksheets

• Leftovers value calculator
• Leftovers log
• Garden calendar for the animals
• List for the fridge door
• Questions for the animal health authority