chicken feed

American

noun

Slang.

an insignificant sum of money.

He's so rich that $1000 is chicken feed to him.
small change, as pennies and nickels.

chicken feed British

noun

slang a trifling amount of money

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

chicken feed Idioms

Trifling amount of money, as in I'm not going to mow lawns for $5 an hour—that's chicken feed. This expression alludes to the fact that chickens can be fed corn and wheat grains too small for other uses. [Slang; early 1800s]

Etymology

Origin of chicken feed

An Americanism dating back to 1830–40

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

chicken feed

“Their needs and their wants are completely different than what we need here,” said Pamela Davis, 40, who was loading bags of chicken feed into the back of her SUV in Yuba City.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2025

Costco even built its own chicken plant in Nebraska to combat rising chicken feed prices.

From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2023

That’s chicken feed compared with the 350 million tons of meat consumed around the world — a number that is only expected to grow.

From New York Times ● Jun. 21, 2023

The trucks will take boxes to Mill’s depots to strip out any contaminants and convert the foodstuff into chicken feed.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 18, 2023

Big Ma said, “Never you mind. That’s your father and his wife’s business,” and then she sent Fern out to the coop with a pan of chicken feed.

From "Gone Crazy in Alabama" by Rita Williams-Garcia

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023