Outta Here
Songster
- May 17, 2021
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All of us love to treat our girls, but the kinds of treats they get can lower egg production. It's just math. Laying pullets/hens need 16% to lay well. If 90% of her daily intake is 16% layer feed and 10% of her daily feed is 9% scratch, her protein intake is lowered to 15.3%. If you underestimate how much you are treating and you give her 20% scratch, her protein intake is now lowered to 14.6%. If you give her 30%, she's only getting 13.9% protein.
How easy is it to underestimate how much you are giving? Here are two pictures of 1/4 lb of feed, the total of what a laying hen will eat in a day. Under it is a picture of 1/10 of that in corn (by weight). On the lower right is how much a handful holds (4.5 times as much as the tablespoon each hen should get).
One handful of scratch for every 4.5 chickens is maximum to make sure they are only getting treated 10% of their diet. Or one tablespoon of scratch per chicken! How many of us toss them handful after handful? I know I was blithely guilty of this until I crunched the numbers. Now I don't even feed 9% scratch, because what is the purpose of lowering their protein? Instead, I give one handful per chicken of dried Black Soldier Fly Larvae. They are much lighter in weight than scratch, so .4 oz equals about one handful. Since BSFL is 45% protein, this results in raising their daily protein level to 18.9%.
Or I treat them with a fermented homemade organic whole-grain scratch of 17.9% protein consisting of corn, wheat, split peas, oats, alfalfa pellets, black oil sunflower seeds and kelp. They would like to skip the peas and alfalfa and just gobble the corn, but those are the main protein in the mix, so I only give enough that they clean their plates of every morsel.
Note: Free-range chickens, in addition to their 16-18% layer feed, are getting extra protein in the insects they eat. For free-rangers, garden produce treats are just another part of their balanced free-ranging diet and aren't crucial to limit.
How easy is it to underestimate how much you are giving? Here are two pictures of 1/4 lb of feed, the total of what a laying hen will eat in a day. Under it is a picture of 1/10 of that in corn (by weight). On the lower right is how much a handful holds (4.5 times as much as the tablespoon each hen should get).
One handful of scratch for every 4.5 chickens is maximum to make sure they are only getting treated 10% of their diet. Or one tablespoon of scratch per chicken! How many of us toss them handful after handful? I know I was blithely guilty of this until I crunched the numbers. Now I don't even feed 9% scratch, because what is the purpose of lowering their protein? Instead, I give one handful per chicken of dried Black Soldier Fly Larvae. They are much lighter in weight than scratch, so .4 oz equals about one handful. Since BSFL is 45% protein, this results in raising their daily protein level to 18.9%.
Or I treat them with a fermented homemade organic whole-grain scratch of 17.9% protein consisting of corn, wheat, split peas, oats, alfalfa pellets, black oil sunflower seeds and kelp. They would like to skip the peas and alfalfa and just gobble the corn, but those are the main protein in the mix, so I only give enough that they clean their plates of every morsel.
Note: Free-range chickens, in addition to their 16-18% layer feed, are getting extra protein in the insects they eat. For free-rangers, garden produce treats are just another part of their balanced free-ranging diet and aren't crucial to limit.
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Again, they'd eat all the bugs they could catch if ranging.
Last week I threw them hook worms from my tomatoes and then saw they are 4% calcium, higher than Black Soldier Fly worms! Ain't insects great? Especially free ones!
