Should I keep food in front of my layers all the time or just feed them portions? I have been feeding them 4-6 oz per hen once a day. Am I starving them? They seem to be thriving but they are shredding the ground under the tractor so much that I need to move them twice a day. Thanks!
The scratching won't stop, but the conventional wisdom is that food should be free choice...that is available all the time. Particularly if they are in the tractor all the time, I would get a bulk feeder and keep it full all the time.
What Jeff said We keep food out for ours all the time and they eat when they feel the need. Scratching is just natural chicken behavior so you'll see it constantly...it's how they hunt for food. Ours are in a portable coop/run and we find we have to move it about every 3 days. Do you have a place for them to dust bathe? Ours were digging holes in the sod until we got a Rubbermaid container and filled it about halfway with a mix of soil and peat moss. As soon as we put that in, they quit digging holes...they still scratch, of course, but they don't really wreck the ground and so don't need to be moved quite as often as before.
