A Little Feed Dillemma

[PotatoChicken]

How much should i feed my 20 chickens? I have been feedinmg them to much and im running out of a 40lb bag of food in a little more than a week. Also i have 6 ducks how much should i feed them. They eat a lot of grass and bugs so i just want to know how much to feed them as a supplement. Thanks.
-Potato

 

[Imp]

I think 40 lbs, for 20 chickens, in a little over a week sounds pretty reasonable.
What breeds? Age? and do they freerange or get treats?

Sorry, I don't know about ducks.

Imp

 

[Kevin565]

What breed ducks and how old? Ducks seem to eat more than a lot of other poultry. Plus remember they need more Niacin in their diets than chickens.

 

[forte22]

You could always mix cracked corn with your chicken food. But for the ducks I would stick to a Duck feed because Niacin is mandatory for there diets.

 

[HEChicken]

It depends on your goals. If you want them to lay a lot of eggs, they need more feed as it takes a lot of calories to produce an egg a day. If you don't care about getting eggs, you can cut down on feed some and as long as they have enough to eat that they are not losing weight, they can maintain on less but won't have any reserves to produce many eggs.

I free feed mine - just keep the feeder full all the time - so I don't know what advice to give as far as measuring out quantities. I have found they only eat what they need and then move on. What I like about free feeding is that if there is a hen who is lower in the pecking order that gets chased away from the feeder by the more dominant hens, she still has a chance to go and eat when they are done. If I were measuring out a quantity of feed, I would worry that the dominant hens would keep the lower ranking hens away from the feeder until it was virtually empty, resulting in them not getting enough nutrition. It can be really hard to tell that a chicken is losing weight because the feathers conceal a lot and you have to pick them up to feel that they are skin and bone.