My Chickens are Being Weird About Their Feed

[NubbyRyuu]

I have a small flock of 7 (Bantam Silkies, Barbu D'Anvers, and a Silkie Barbu Cross), all mixed ages, so the feed is mixed. They are also in an old horse stall that was made chicken friendly and lack a run.

Their main feed is NatureWise All Flock. During the winter, I mixed in small amounts of 6 Grain Scratch Supplement to help them gain weight, and free choice corn. All this they ate in moderation so nothing was eaten too much or too little.

Spring seems to have them a bit mixed up. I had noticed recently that in their regular feeders, they were digging out food like crazy, mostly digging out the All Flock pellets for the scratch grain. Well, I put a stop to it with one feeder they emptied out and only put in the pellets; the other feeder still has both. I tried giving them free choice scratch grain, which they sucked down, but I only did this once. Now they won't eat from the feeders, and are only going after the wasted food. My oldest girl, the Barbu, has a seperate chick feeder with chick crumbles because she's at that age and won't touch pellets, do I'm not too worried about her (the others won't go after it).

I'm not too sure why they're rebelling like this, and know at some point they'll eat from their feeders again, but I'm a bit baffled.

Any ideas?

 

[azygous]

It's not a mystery when you compare the scratch grain to candy and cookies. It's high in sugars and compares to candy and cookies in the amount of nutrition they all contain.

We aren't surprised when kids come back from a weekend at Grandma's where she spoils them with treats and they refuse to eat their nutritional meals immediately after getting home. It takes them several days for the heavy exposure to sugar to work its way out of their brain and bodies and for them to accept their regular meals again.

So it is with chickens after they've had a stretch of exposure to the sugars in scratch and corn. It has to work its way out of their systems, just as with children, before they find the regular feed attractive again to their tastes.

A personal note about the Nature Wise all flock feed. I've had to buy a bag of it occasionally when the feed store has had trouble getting Purina Flock Raiser in. My chickens hate the Nature Wise, but will eventually eat it. I think it may be because Purina has more corn in it and it's sweeter. Just an observation.

 

[NubbyRyuu]

It's not a mystery when you compare the scratch grain to candy and cookies. It's high in sugars and compares to candy and cookies in the amount of nutrition they all contain.

We aren't surprised when kids come back from a weekend at Grandma's where she spoils them with treats and they refuse to eat their nutritional meals immediately after getting home. It takes them several days for the heavy exposure to sugar to work its way out of their brain and bodies and for them to accept their regular meals again.

So it is with chickens after they've had a stretch of exposure to the sugars in scratch and corn. It has to work its way out of their systems, just as with children, before they find the regular feed attractive again to their tastes.

A personal note about the Nature Wise all flock feed. I've had to buy a bag of it occasionally when the feed store has had trouble getting Purina Flock Raiser in. My chickens hate the Nature Wise, but will eventually eat it. I think it may be because Purina has more corn in it and it's sweeter. Just an observation.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense when you put it like that. When their corn supply was just starting to run dry, the whether got nice, so that was removed with no ill effects.

I know this kinda happened once or twice before (different intervals) and they went back to their feed without much issue. Now they're just being stubborn. So I've gotten them bits of grass, torn as small as possible, and put a little on their food so they'd eat it.

When mine were younger, they loved Flock Party, but some time last year I moved them to All Flock since I have 2 roosters and they don't need what the girls need. And speaking of which, one of my roosters is loyal to the pellets; I bring him in nightly since my old girl was picking on him and no one fights her (she may be small, but she packs a punch), and he'll go for his food bowl and tibdit for me to eat the food he "found".