Feeding Laying Hens Fruit

I give hens fruit and it never makes them stop laying.  I don't know why people say that fruit is bad for hens!  Maybe the big breeds don't mind treats as much as the little ones do.  Puzzling.

I think that is just an old wives tale.  I feed all kinds of fruit to my birds and it never affected laying.  My girls love fruit.

There's a lot of protein in an egg.

There is very little protein in most fruit.

Eggs can only be produced when the nutrients in their diet exceeds what is necessary for the maintenance of their bodies.

As an example: If they are filling up on watermelon (and they can ), there won't be much surplus protein for eggs.

If they fill up on watermelon every day (I suspect they might want to ), that might shut down egg production until they can get back on a better balanced diet.

Steve

digitS' :

There's a lot of protein in an egg.

There is very little protein in most fruit.

Eggs can only be produced when the nutrients in their diet exceeds what is necessary for the maintenance of their bodies.

As an example: If they are filling up on watermelon (and they can ), there won't be much surplus protein for eggs.

If they fill up on watermelon every day (I suspect they might want to ), that might shut down egg production until they can get back on a better balanced diet.

Steve

wats good to feed them as protein

In poultry feed, the primary protein sources are oilseed and animal protein meals.

Soybean meal, from which oil has been extracted, must be the most common oilseed used. Animal protein sources are meat, fish, blood, and feather meals.

All this information (an a whole lot more) can be found in "Nutrient Requirements of Poultry: Ninth Revised Edition, 1994" from your friendly, National Academy of Sciences.

Steve

All my garden surplus/spoiled gets tossed over the fence to the chickens, sometimes that can be quite a lot---5 to 6 5gal buckets. They have a large run, I have not seen fruit/garden surplus harming the egg production. I have seen stress like predation or overly hot days slow them down.