About a month ago I bought 18 hens, the coop..basically the whole nine yards. The feed they were being fed looked like scratch and nothing more and I was told that it was being bought for them from a grain elevator by the ton. After checking around, it does seem like it was just okay food. I switched them to a pellet and mixed in some of what they had given me with the birds. I also mixed in a bit of actual scratch with it...this is what the feed store recommended to me. Well now it looks like they are avoiding the pellets at all costs. Egg production is down, but that could be due to the heat as well. I have my concerns that some of the hens are quite old and are not laying or if they are laying it is not regular. So I am about to buy feed again and am wondering what to do, should I go ahead and buy pellets again and keep feeding it to them with the thought of they will eat it when they are hungry enough???? Or switch them to a crumble??? I am in a very rural area and am limited in choices at our feed store, everything is Purina, I switched them to the Purina Plus Omega, which is expensive and disheartening to see them ignore it. I did change the type of feeder I was using that does cut back on loss, but it still seems to be that I find pellets all over the hen yard. They get about 6-10 hours of free range every day as well as one daily treat like a watermelon or yogurt or some meal worms or BOSS. Any advice or ideas are greatly appreciated.
My hens have not rejected new food very often, but when they do, I try something else and mix them. Mine prefer mash or crumbles. Some of them pick through and fling it out of the feeder, creating waste. My solution was to get a large circular tray (they sell them at Home Depot for putting under a water heater) and put the feeder on that. They fling the feed, and most of it land on the tray. I occasionally scoop the feed up and put it in other open-style feed dishes, and eventually they eat it up. Good luck!
