i free range as much as possible, so everyone pretty much gets chick starter/grower and i offer free choice oyster shell. if they're in a breeding pen, then i use layer pellets since there's less waste involved, plus oyster shell offered. i will say tho, my free range eggs are much harder than my breeding pen ones... go figure. now if they made a starter/grower PELLET, i'd be all set.
Purina FlockRaiser comes in a pellet, and is intended for use in young birds. It is 20% protein, instead of 18% for the Start & Grow chick crumbles. I have found the FlockRaiser pellets to not be as hard as the layer pellets, so there tends to be more broken pellets and "fines" (powder or tiny pieces) than with the layer pellets. This is useful when first transitioning the chicks but annoying later. These pellets worked great when the chicks were 8-18 weeks old, too young for the layer pellets, but physically large enough that they were almost choking on the tiny chick crumbles.
Neopolitancrazy, as far as customizing the diet for specific breeds, I customized the diet of my 2012 group of chicks and it worked great for the Dorkings and terrible for the Barnevelders, so there are some risks. I ordered 25 straight-run chicks from Sandhill, 13 Red Dorkings and 12 Barnevelders. When they were around 3-6 weeks old almost all of them started feather picking, to the point that it was quite predatory. None of the usual reasons for this behavior applied (overcrowding, boredom, unbalanced diet), but they were clearly hunting for bloodfeathers. To give them a substitute form of high protein, I added 10% dry kitten food to their diet. This slowed down but did not fully resolve the behavior. The next week I mixed up their diet to 20% kitten food. That resolved the problem by ~98%. The next week I gave them treats of salmon once daily and continued the 20% kitten food until they were 12-14 weeks old, which stopped the feather predation completely. I then started reducing the percentage of kitten food daily but added in GameBirdChow (30% protein, but all vegetarian-based instead of animal-based in the kitten food) until they were back on just Flock Raiser and GameBird Chow, with the final mix equalling ~24% protein. I continued this, plus the daily salmon treats, until the pullets started laying at ~19 weeks old, then switched to Layena Plus Omega pellets and daily salmon treats.
Obviously, these are much higher protein levels then are recommended for chickens. And the Barnevelder cockerels didn't do well with this protocol. The Barnevelder breed has some Croad Langshan in its foundation, so the males go through a very rapid growth spurt to produce that beautiful tall carriage. And rapid height gain plus high protein diets tend to produce joint problems. Two of the five cockerels (40%) had leg problems by the time they were 6 months old, so customizing diets can have serious consequences. In this case all the Barnevelder pullets were unaffected, and all the cockerels were meant for the freezer anyway, so lesson learned very cheaply.
But the Dorkings are a different story. All the Dorkings did great on this very high protein diet, with both plant AND animal based proteins. If you think of the history of the breed it totally makes sense. This is a very old breed that has been around for centuries before formulated pellets were developed. They were mostly kept in the UK and around the Mediterranean coast in Europe (Italy and France). This is the time and place where Dorkings were developed, molded and perfected, so the breed developed to do best under the conditions that were available. At that time and in those locations, birds were fed what was available on farms and from fishermen. If you read the old journals from the English poultry fanciers they talk about mixing meals for their birds using fish scraps (heads, skin, innards), meat scraps, fat, milk, vegetable scraps, and local whole grains, in addition to either free ranging or rotational pen confinement to supply grass and insects. The birds that didn't do well under these management techniques went to the stew pots. The birds that thrived went to the breeding pens and their lines continued, eventually producing the Dorkings that we have today. It only makes sense that today's Dorkings might benefit from a little more Olde English countryside and a little less "perfect kibble #1."
Plus, this breed has short legs, so you don't get the growth spurts from high protein diets like you do with the taller breeds. This makes leg problems in Dorkings less likely with high protein diets. (I always wondered why there were so many short legged breeds from the UK. You would think that farmers would want long legged breeds in countries with so much rain. But it makes sense when you think about it from a dietary basis. If your economy is such that fish scraps are a free and plentiful food for your birds, and that leads to a very high protein diet, and high protein diets lead to lameness in long-legged breeds but not in short-legged breeds, then it makes sense that coastal communities would favor short-legged birds.)
On the flip side, there are many experienced Dorking breeders that do not recommend high protein diets, and have reported that their birds do best on 16% protein instead of the standard 18% in chick starter. I know of one very experienced, very well educated poultry fancier (retired animal management professor) who turns all his heritage cockerels out into a wooded pasture when they're 8-12 weeks old and supplements them only with a 14% protein diet. So there's not a single right answer here. Management is much more than just diet or just housing. It's a total husbandry package, and what works great in one package could be a disaster in someone else's setup.
Neopolitancrazy, where were you finding the threads that discussed customizing diets for different breeds? I'd like to read them.
--April
