Am I feeding too much?

[Mrs. K]

I do not give unlimited feed, and I do not give a inflexible amount. I am wondering about your feed set up, as in a lot of feed can be scooped or beaked out of the dish and wasted into the dirt.

A feed dish is best if it has a little rim, mine is an old hubcap..... but I put that in to a bigger rubber bowl, and every so often empty the big bowl back into the smaller bowl. It is rather amazing how much feed chickens can waste, especially if they never get hungry enough to clean things up well.

My goal is to have just a little feed left in the bowl at night...... if it is bone empty, then I feed a little more the next day, if there is quite a bit left, I don't feed as much. Mine do get chicken feed, and some scratch, and whatever kitchen garbage that comes out that day.

I have NEVER cooked a chicken for them, scrambled eggs for them, or fed them good bread. When I clean the plates from supper, when I clean out the fridge, and any vegetable trimings go into the chicken bucket.

Another way to reduce your feed bill is to reduce the number of girls you have...... 14 chickens should be laying about 10-12 eggs a day with those breeds, does your family use that many?

But the biggest problem in your set up, might just be waste..... there are a couple of set ups, where the billed out food is caught and refed to them. It might surprise you how much is being wasted. It did me about six months into chickens years ago.

Mrs K

 

[lazy gardener]

My 16 birds go through 50# of FF every 3 weeks. They also get table scraps (not much) and I've just started making sprouts for them. They got a total of 2 quarts of sprouts all of last week. They get the occasional head of Sorghum. The key for reduced feed bill for my flock is fermented feed. There is absolutely NO waste, and they are better able to utilize the nutrition in their feed. They are fed in the morning, get little scraps during the day, and if their crops are not very full, or if I have to lure them into the coop, they get a scoop (3 - 4 cups) of pellets tossed into the litter in the lower level of their coop at bedtime.

 

[aart]

Ditto Mrs. K's post....especially the flexible part.

I feed certain number of scoops of crumble that they will eat in a 24 hour period and adjust it depending on how much scraps they might get and/or how much is left the next day.

They do bill out a certain amount but if you don't fill the feeder back up they will eat it off the floor....sometimes I think they actually prefer to eat off the floor/ground, one pullet I have actually watched do this repeatedly.

Stop with the bread and other low nutrition feeds, pay attention to the amount of protein they are getting. I give veggie scraps and meat for treats.

I like to feed an 'all flock' 20% protein crumble to all ages and genders. Makes life much simpler to store and distribute one type of chow that everyone can eat and have calcium available at all times for the layers, oyster shell mixed with rinsed, dried, crushed chicken egg shells in a separate container.

The higher protein crumble offsets the 8% protein scratch grains and other kitchen/garden scraps I like to offer.