Chicken feeding.

[dmwalker1999]

Im new to chicken raising. And I was wondering if I should get different types of foods or feed for my chickens. Like food with more protein or more calcium or if I should feed them yogurt. Thanks for all the help!

 

[sdsmowen]

What are you feeding them now?

 

[dmwalker1999]

scratch. It has like corn and some brown looking seeds in it.

 

[sdsmowen]

I have chickens of different age ranges we use flock raiser feed with treats of greens and fruit. they free range during the day so we dont use scratch.

 

[dmwalker1999]

I let mine free range too. And all she eats is grass hoppers and lays in the garden in the shade. Every now and then I wil feed her some jalepenos.

 

[Den in Penn]

Have a good balanced food as their basic food. Scratch is not a balanced feed. With a good feed as their main feed you can give them some treats like the jalapenos or scratch. While the range is in good shape they can nearly balance their diet, but when it is bad they can't. So getting a balanced feed for them is important.

 

[MrsRobinson]

We are fairly new to raising chickens, we use a balanced blend of cracked seed from Tractor Supply and treat them to snacks of cracked corn, grapes, bread and stale cereal + snacks.

 

[Fred's Hens]

The basic, underlying staple of their diet should be begin with a quality feed. A mill grinds protein sources, grain, supplements, vitamins, minerals, essential trace elements and these formulas contain a complete ration for the birds health, development, well being and egg laying. To this basic staple, a chicken can supplement to a greater or lesser degree by foraging on the local environment for grasses, bugs and seeds. What portion of the diet can be foraged varies greatly. Some forage areas are either too small or too depleted to provide any meaningful contribution to the bird's diet.

Adding small, very small amounts of scratch grains and/or table food is fine. However, a bird is quite capable of becoming spoiled and can become preferential to these things for far too much of the diet; a diet that is quickly unbalanced.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I totally agree with Fred. A basic feed that is meant to be chicken feed provides a balanced diet. That should be the base of your feeding program. It won't hurt to supplement that with small amounts of scratch, kitchen scraps, stuff from the garden, all that. If they forage for some of their food, that is really great. Even if the quality (by that I mean variety of what they can find) is not really great, any foraging is good.

What chickens need, like any other living animal, is a balanced diet. You will see people on here that feed their chickens all kinds of weird stuff and all kinds of weird diets, but how many people do you know that don't even feed themselves close to a balanced diet? There is nothing wrong with some occasional cake and ice cream, maybe some cookies or candy, in your diet, but don't make that your basic diet. Make the chicken feed that is supposed to be chicken feed their basic diet and give them a little dessert. Scratch is a dessert.

 

[Mhernandez]

Hello, I am also new to raising chickens. Is there an amount per day per chicken that should be fed before any scrapes ? And is there any suggestions on how to not feed the wild birds also?