- Apr 20, 2014
- 30
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Cool thread I started feeding my chickens sprouted seeds.
I have do lentils and they love them.
Carson
I have do lentils and they love them.
Carson
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Linda's right, it is the crowing the Californians objected to. Roosters are legal here so there is nothing they could do. But luckily for them, I sold two big roos this week and one two weeks ago so I will soon be down to one medium sized frizzle and 2 bantam roosters. Hopefully I can sell at least one of those. That's th trouble with hatching your own eggs or buying straight run chicks; you get a lot of roosters. Then because you raised them, it is hard to eat them and you have to try to sell them. No one wants roos. Dilemma!
Ok, thanks! They're 11 weeks old and still in the brooder (looong story about a custom coop builder who flaked on me; coop to arrive soon from someone else!), and I was feeding them 3 times a day with the dry feed and there was always a mad scramble when I topped it off. Now I give them FF in the morning, and there's still a good amount of it when I get home from work. I offer them some mealworms and veg at night and they go crazy for that, but the FF doesn't get polished off. I tried to weigh it this morning and of course my kitchen scale's battery was dead, LOL!
Weighing the leftover food? You're being way too anal about it! Never fear, they will always eat as much as they need and if they think treat type food is coming they will wait for it instead of eating their ff. Try laying off the treats for a couple of days and you will see how they finish off the ff. Hang in there! You know what's best for them. : )
Ok, thanks! They're 11 weeks old and still in the brooder (looong story about a custom coop builder who flaked on me; coop to arrive soon from someone else!), and I was feeding them 3 times a day with the dry feed and there was always a mad scramble when I topped it off. Now I give them FF in the morning, and there's still a good amount of it when I get home from work. I offer them some mealworms and veg at night and they go crazy for that, but the FF doesn't get polished off. I tried to weigh it this morning and of course my kitchen scale's battery was dead, LOL!
4) All of the birds will ignore all other feed types if they think they'll get meal worms.
My suggestion: Stop giving meal worms for a few days up to a week. Then only give meal worms once or twice per week, favoring fresh greens or maybe a weekly mashed hard-boiled egg instead. You've established a routine in which they expect that treat of meal worms and will hold out for it. Chickens are extremely Pavlovian in their trainable tendencies. Breaking the habit of giving them their favorite treat will also break the expectation and result in their focus once again turning back to their food. It's like spoiling a child with the promise of cookies instead of veggies. As long as they know those cookies are on the near horizon, they'll insist they're just not hungry in order to avoid eating their veggies.
If after all of this you still find that they're leaving more FF behind towards the end of the evening, use a spoon to scrape up the drier FF from the feed trough and add the meal worms to it, forming it into "treat balls". I've done this a couple times and it's been downright entertaining to watch my birds peck apart those balls....and there's nothing left at the end.
It honestly didn't occur me they'd skip eating all day long in order to wait for a handful of worms in the evening (that certainly wasn't the case when I was feeding dry). They love their fresh greens/veg. That NEVER gets ignored (esp if there is a tomato in the mix!).