Just feeding chickens scratch feed & cracked corn.

[Avocadoman]

If protein is the primary concern

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.



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."

If protein is the main deficit with scratch then I'm not going to worry about them eating it because they hunt and kill lizards and giant night crawlers the size of snakes every morning. My alpha hen yanked a lizard tail off and the lizard just sat there and played dead while she ate it's tail then she turned around and ate the lizard...dumb lizard. I suspect they are getting a lot of proteins to more than account for any lack in scratch. My big problem is CRD flare ups and egg-drop syndrome it seems. Nothing I can do about either except play soothing music to the hens.

 

[Avocadoman]

You didn't accidentally buy some of that new fangled pellet bedding instead of feed, did you?
I think that stuff is made of wood and would explain why they wouldn't eat it.

ha no, but my chickens have always been fussy eaters, I think they just weren't meant to be cooped up and fed "scientifically formulated" feed. They love the bugs and grass and I've caught them making guacamole with a fallen avocado on more than one occasion. My late great rooster like to snitch my beer when I wasn't lookin' They just might have gourmet tastes. I mean would you eat pellet food?

 

[NatJ]

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.

It is certainly possible to get a bad bag of pelleted feed (moldy, old, mixing error at the mill, etc.)
Is this just one bag, or have you tried multiple bags and gotten the same results?

If protein is the main deficit with scratch then I'm not going to worry about them eating it because they hunt and kill lizards and giant night crawlers the size of snakes every morning. My alpha hen yanked a lizard tail off and the lizard just sat there and played dead while she ate it's tail then she turned around and ate the lizard...dumb lizard. I suspect they are getting a lot of proteins to more than account for any lack in scratch. My big problem is CRD flare ups and egg-drop syndrome it seems. Nothing I can do about either except play soothing music to the hens.

That is something that varies drastically from one area to another. If your hens have access to plenty of good sources of protein, they may be fine. And if there are that many creatures they can eat, that might be a sign that your area also provides enough of the various vitamins and minerals that animals need. There are many places where that is not the case, but it might be true where YOU live.

Scratch is a fine source of just plain calories for energy, which might be the main thing your chickens need in addition to what they can forage. (If someone fed scratch to chickens that are confined to a coop, with no other food options, the situation would be very different.)

Nutrition can make chickens more susceptible or less susceptible to many physical problems, but I don't know enough about CRD, or egg-drop syndrome, or the nutritional details of what your chickens eat, to know if there is any effect in this case.

 

[Avocadoman]

Have you tried moistening some of the feed with plain water?

Many birds that are picky will eat the layer ration if it is wetted and the consistency of cooked oatmeal.

If you are fine with your birds eating scratch and whatever they forage that's up to you.

Fatty liver disease is a real thing and for some birds there are no warning signs. They just keel over from blood vessels in the liver rupturing.

The pellet feed is not defective. Your birds are spoiled by all the high calorie, high fat treat

Spoiled chicken is only bad if they're already in the fridge. I did try grinding up some of the original pellets I had and moisten it and a few of my hens at least tried it out but I would not call their reaction "enthusiastic," and I'm certainly not going to grind and moisten food for picky chickens. I used that pellet bag for ground squirrel bait in a trap and it worked well for that at least, the other bags of food not-so-much. Luckily one of the pellet bags I got from a neighbor and was free so throwing it out was no loss.

 

[Somewhere_In_The_Clouds]

Chickens will always choose the tastier scratch

While this is probably true for most chickens it is not for my broody raised pullets, they choose forage over scratch mix all the time and they are constantly wasting a majority of the scratch mix.
I really don't have a side with all this diet discussion (I do not believe processed pellets are bad and I don't believe a whole grain/forage diet is the only way), but I think it's good to discuss all the options and sides.

 

[Somewhere_In_The_Clouds]

Is forage what you call chicken pellets?
Mine won't eat things like strawberries, grapes or lettuce, chickens are strange sometimes.

No, forage is grass, weeds, bugs etc. Whatever they can find when not in their run, including sneaking into the garden but they mostly stick to the lawn and leaf litter under the trees.
All my other chickens love their scratch but the broody raised are noticeably different.

 

[nuthatched]

No, forage is grass, weeds, bugs etc. Whatever they can find when not in their run, including sneaking into the garden but they mostly stick to the lawn and leaf litter under the trees.
All my other chickens love their scratch but the broody raised are noticeably different.

Maybe that broody doesn't care for scratch so she raised the pullets that way.
I was comparing scratch to pellets, not scratch the forage. Mine prefer forage too.

 

[Taralynn07]

My husband says in the old days all they fed chickens was scratch so he doesn’t want to feed them anything else. I did convince him to feed them pellets in the winter but we also don’t leave food out all day long. They get fed a small amount in the morning and then a little bit around 4 pm when we let them out. Their pen is about 2500 sf for 30 chickens or so, so it is quite large. He says they get plenty of feed. The hens go through cycles of laying good or not but over all it is pretty good. So our chickens will probably keep just getting scratch for the most part.