Just feeding chickens scratch feed & cracked corn.

[Perris]

Heating the soy reduces the phytic acid. The soy meal added to feeds is heat treated enough that it is not a factor anymore.

Soy is added because it has methionine - the amino acid that is the first limiting factor in proteins. It is one of the only plant sources of that - or practical sources, anyway. The next best options either have more/worse antinutrients or are much, much more expensive. Usually both, I think.

but it is available in bioactive form in animal, fish and insects, and their products eg. milk, and they are widely available and sometimes cheap alternative sources of protein.

 

[Avocadoman]

I know this is an old thread but it came to the top of my search. I've tried to feed my chickens laying pellets of four different brands and they simply wont eat any of them except the Nutrina All Flock and they only eat a little of that. The scratch I have though, they can't keep out of it, they love it, it's the only bagged feed they'll eat so I really don't have a choice but to feed them scratch. However, I do free range them a lot and so they get lots of bugs and grass and table scraps too and I put oyster shell in the feed so I figure it's all ok. I have no clue as how it affects laying because I've had so many battles with CRD, predation and egg-drop-syndrome that I have bigger issues as far as egg production.

 

[Avocadoman]

This thread is from 2011, you're not likely to receive a response.

Actually this thread came to the top of my search engine when I queried "why not feed them all scratch" or something like that.

 

[nuthatched]

Actually this thread came to the top of my search engine when I queried "why not feed them all scratch" or something like that.

Search engine looks for word matches, not dates.
An all scratch diet will slowly kill most birds. Feed them the pelleted feed, no healthy birds will refuse to eat. They're just spoiled with the tasty junk food.

 

[NatJ]

I know this is an old thread but it came to the top of my search. I've tried to feed my chickens laying pellets of four different brands and they simply wont eat any of them except the Nutrina All Flock and they only eat a little of that. The scratch I have though, they can't keep out of it, they love it, it's the only bagged feed they'll eat so I really don't have a choice but to feed them scratch. However, I do free range them a lot and so they get lots of bugs and grass and table scraps too and I put oyster shell in the feed so I figure it's all ok. I have no clue as how it affects laying because I've had so many battles with CRD, predation and egg-drop-syndrome that I have bigger issues as far as egg production.

Actually, you do have a choice. If you completely quit feeding the scratch, most chickens will eat the complete feed rather than go hungry. It typically doesn't take many days for them to get used to the idea.

You can also try adding water to a bit of the pellets or crumbles, so it makes a wet mush. Most chickens love it that way (after they finish thinking about the "new" thing and actually try it.)

For chickens shut in a coop & run with no other choices, scratch is definitely missing some important things. For chickens that free range like yours, sometimes they can find what else they need to be healthy and sometimes they cannot (depends on the season, the climate, how many chickens, how much space, and a variety of other factors.)

If you think your chickens are fine, you may decide not to make any changes-- I'm just mentioning things you may not have thought of (and if you already thought of those things, maybe this will help someone else with a similar situation in the future.)

 

[Avocadoman]

Search engine looks for word matches, not dates.
An all scratch diet will slowly kill most birds. Feed them the pelleted feed, no healthy birds will refuse to eat. They're just spoiled with the tasty junk food.

I've had 10 chickens and not one will eat pelleted food from four different brands no matter how much I "feed them pelleted food" I just can't force feed it to them. I don't think you understood to what extent THEY WILL NOT EAT PELLETED FOOD. Healthy birds will refuse to eat if the food is not to their taste. I can feed them a piece of wood and they will not eat it even when there is no other option. This really says a lot with regards to what ever is in pelleted food. I suspect it's not actually food but compressed sawdust or something. I can't even use it for squirrel trap bait, even the squirrels wont eat it. The wild birds wont eat pelleted food either. I'm curious why scratch would "slowly kill them." What nutrient is it lacking? Or better still what nutrient is scratch lacking that could not easily be compensated for by grazing for grass and bugs 2-4 hours a day? What evidence do you have that scratch will actually kill a bird? Are there any studies regarding this or is it just one of those opinions passed down by word of mouth with no hard evidence supporting it?

 

[Perris]

 

[Geena]

I suspect it's not actually food but compressed sawdust or something.

LOL, that's just absurd.

If your birds are free ranging all day over a large area with good forage they're not going to want to eat that many pellets. Depending on where you are located, come fall a lot of those food resources are going to dry up and then they will for sure need a more complete feed. Scratch is far from complete and is lacking in many important nutrients that your chickens need to survive and be healthy.

If you look on your bag of scratch, it usually has a disclaimer on there stating that it is not a complete feed and should only comprise 10% or less of their daily diet.

If you have laying hens I would suggest that you at least have oyster shell available for them.

 

[NatJ]

I'm curious why scratch would "slowly kill them." What nutrient is it lacking? Or better still what nutrient is scratch lacking that could not easily be compensated for by grazing for grass and bugs 2-4 hours a day? What evidence do you have that scratch will actually kill a bird? Are there any studies regarding this or is it just one of those opinions passed down by word of mouth with no hard evidence supporting it?

What nutrients are lacking? Protein is one of the most obvious ones. Check the bag for the percent protein in the scratch.

There has been a lot of research into what percent protein is needed by chickens. Protein is one of the most expensive things in chicken feed, so all the big companies want to know how little they can get away with. The general consensus seems to be about 18% minimum for chicks, 15% minimum for layers, with higher numbers in some specific cases.

Protein is made of amino acids. Chickens need certain ones in particular ratios. If there is not enough of one, all the rest go to waste because they cannot be used correctly. There is plenty of research on that too. Methionine and Lysine are the two that are most likely to run short first, so they tend to have individual listings on bags of chicken food, but I'm not sure whether they would be listed on the scratch grains bag. In Europe, chicken foods tend to have lower overall protein than in the USA, but they are more careful about making sure all the amino acids are properly balanced so the chickens can use it effectively. Scratch grains alone does not have the right balance to get away with lower total protein amounts.

Can free ranging for 2-4 hours each day make up the difference? That depends on what they find while ranging. A plain grassy lawn, or a piece of barren desert, is not going to have what they need. I don't know how many bugs and worms are enough for each chicken each day, and I don't know what it takes to let the bugs and worms reproduce faster than the chickens eat them, so I cannot evaluate whether your specific property can produce what they need or not.

What evidence do you have that scratch will actually kill a bird? Are there any studies regarding this or is it just one of those opinions passed down by word of mouth with no hard evidence supporting it?

There are lots of studies about protein levels in chicken diets, going back about a hundred years. Here is one example:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7178002/
"The effect of low protein pullet growing diets on performance of laying hens housed in the fall," with authors R B Christmas, C R Douglas, L W Kalch, R H Harms
It was published in 1982.

Two quotes:
"A total of 6000 layer-type pullet chicks were fed either a low protein (9.1%) or a high protein (15.4%) diet from 8 through 18 weeks of the growing period"

"Pullets fed the low protein grower diet had higher mortality during the growing period, greater feed intake during the laying period, eggs with higher Haugh unit values, and reduced egg production in the laying house."

 

[Avocadoman]

LOL, that's just absurd.

If your birds are free ranging all day over a large area with good forage they're not going to want to eat that many pellets. Depending on where you are located, come fall a lot of those food resources are going to dry up and then they will for sure need a more complete feed. Scratch is far from complete and is lacking in many important nutrients that your chickens need to survive and be healthy.

If you look on your bag of scratch, it usually has a disclaimer on there stating that it is not a complete feed and should only comprise 10% or less of their daily diet.

If you have laying hens I would suggest that you at least have oyster shell available for them.

You still gotta wonder what's in pellet food if even a wild animal wont eat it. Even the local possums and raccoons wont touch the pellets. Food resources actually improve here in fall and winter due to rain (SoCal) but never really go away. Odd thing is despite foraging, they still eat plenty of scratch but not the pellets so I figure there's something in the scratch that they need that is far more nutritious than pellets and they can't get foraging. I put oyster shell in all their food, they don't eat that either but their egg shells are fine other than the two hens that have egg drop syndrome, so they're getting calcium from somewhere. Could be from the grilled cheese sandwich with Tillamook and Brie I share with them! LOL