Australorps breed Thread

[Gramma Chick]

Quote: Im agreeing with his statement..

 

[bruceha2000]

The X2 is an agreement--Not a doubling of layer crumbles.

If they are having a hard mold, you can also feed them a higher protein feed. Nutreena sells a feather fixer that seems to help.

Yep, you can double, triple even quadruple the layer pellets, but they will only eat as much as they want so don't bother feeding extra to the wild birds, mice, rats whatever.

Ron - I think your autocorrect didn't like "moult" or "molt". I would sure hate for my chickens to have hard mold on them

 

[getaclue]

Quote:

Ron - I think your autocorrect didn't like "moult" or "molt". I would sure hate for my chickens to have hard mold on them

You've had a sheltered life if you haven't gone through a hard mold yet....ROFLOL!

 

[bruceha2000]

Well I AM relatively new to chickens. I'll keep an eye out for it

 

[ronott1]

Yep, you can double, triple even quadruple the layer pellets, but they will only eat as much as they want so don't bother feeding extra to the wild birds, mice, rats whatever.

Ron - I think your autocorrect didn't like "moult" or "molt". I would sure hate for my chickens to have hard mold on them

I know!

Auto Correct is so funny.

 

[Seatrout00]

In my opinion it is mainly based on two things; strain and nutrition. If you don't have these two working together you won't get as much as you could when working together. Each breeder can have a different strain. Maybe one breeder is breeding show quality instead of egg or meat; another eggs instead of meat or show; meat instead of eggs or show; or meat from the roosters and eggs from the hens. Then the nutrition has to be right. If you have a chicken with meat genes on egg laying diet your meat will not be great. If you have an egg laying chicken on a meat diet your egg production will tank. You just need to get everything to the right spot. So far I have 3 hens that have been laying every day after the first week of laying. Their first week of laying they would lay every other day. Just as how right now I have 24 pullets and I got 15-22 eggs a day and I've yet to add any additional lighting.

This makes perfect sense and I greatly appreciate you explaining this. I aim to have my girls on the best diet available - they of course, will be on laying feed with supplements from my mealworm farm that we will start when we get back, as well as table scraps and extra fruit/veggies. As far as the strains of the hens themselves, I won't know if that is quality until I raise them up and see what they can do. I can say this - the chicks the feed store got in last month (while I have no idea how they lay) were very healthy and clean - I was very impressed.

 

[Birdrain92]

This makes perfect sense and I greatly appreciate you explaining this. I aim to have my girls on the best diet available - they of course, will be on laying feed with supplements from my mealworm farm that we will start when we get back, as well as table scraps and extra fruit/veggies. As far as the strains of the hens themselves, I won't know if that is quality until I raise them up and see what they can do. I can say this - the chicks the feed store got in last month (while I have no idea how they lay) were very healthy and clean - I was very impressed.

Your welcome. Not sure if I mentioned it previously but you can have the chicks you buy; even if they are moderate egg layers with genetics, the nutrition can influence them to be better egg laying hens. After breeding so many times with the nutrition for an egg layer you can get a strain of egg laying hens. Also you'll have to keep accurate records for it to be affective. My feed is layer crumbles and cracked corn. 1lb of cracked corn for every 2lbs of layer crumbles.
Oyster shells I add during molt or if the eggshells are showing that my hens need a boost in calcium.

Here's the feed that I buy my chickens.

Here's the nutrition tag.

 

[Seatrout00]

Oh yes, I meant to add oyster shells - that is a must for the calcium - though as they free range in my side yard, they will likely get a lot of goodies as well, and being as we live in Florida, our soil is naturally full of calcium AND oddly enough, I have a ton of oyster shells discarded in my yard - not ground up of course, but from a trip to Apalachicola years ago, we have about four bushels of oyster shells discarded around my fruit trees. I have no idea if that will help at all, but it might add to the soil and critters the hens will eat.

 

[Birdrain92]

Oh yes, I meant to add oyster shells - that is a must for the calcium - though as they free range in my side yard, they will likely get a lot of goodies as well, and being as we live in Florida, our soil is naturally full of calcium AND oddly enough, I have a ton of oyster shells discarded in my yard - not ground up of course, but from a trip to Apalachicola years ago, we have about four bushels of oyster shells discarded around my fruit trees. I have no idea if that will help at all, but it might add to the soil and critters the hens will eat.

If they need calcium they'll find it but always good to keep some on hand just in case.

 

[Seatrout00]

I've already purchased a small hanging, metal container that will hold ground oyster shell in their coop area - it makes no sense to raise hens for eggs and deny them enough calcium to produce for optimal numbers of eggs. Oyster shell will be standard for our girls. Thank you for reminding me - I'm on vacation and we've been drinking a good bit over this New Year's so ... my mind was elsewhere when I posted.