Best Broiler Feed?

[rosetarantelli]

thugnasty_ufc?
I know it's tempting, but I would avoid paying too much attention to farming advice on Instagram.

I would have so many predators if I started leaving deer organs in or around my coop. I bring deer that I hunt up to my house to butcher them.., and the chickens eat a lot of the extras that get tossed off and that's all good, but then I clean up and get everything out and away from the dooryard that could possibly attract hawks, eagles, coons, mink, coyotes, etc.

I plan on feeding them my vegetable scraps and such- you just recommend cleaning those up each night to stop predators and rats from being attracted at night?
I already really worry about attracting rats especially because I’m going to be raising Jumbo jail. Farmers in my area have said rats were their biggest predators so I really want to avoid those too.

 

[iwltfum]

I plan on feeding them my vegetable scraps and such- you just recommend cleaning those up each night to stop predators and rats from being attracted at night?
I already really worry about attracting rats especially because I’m going to be raising Jumbo jail. Farmers in my area have said rats were their biggest predators so I really want to avoid those too.

I never had a problem with rats when I lived at a property that had them. But I did cover brooders with hardware cloth just in case. Don't really have them where I live now.

I don't raise chickens in a run and only did once briefly. I know that if you throw enough compostables down anywhere without enough carbon to absorb the decomposition or enough animals to eat all of the compostable material, then you will almost certainly end up with a stinky and slimy mess.

From my experience with chicken runs, a few raw vegetable scraps here and there isn't going to hurt anything just don't let it pile up.

Raw veg might attract rodents..so consider that. Especially potatoes, carrots, beets, stuff like that..fruits too.

But chicken feed attracts rodents just as well- if not better. Are you going to use a treadle feeder? Put their food up every night? Go full hardware cloth fort knox?
There is only so much you can do. Bedding will have feed in it inevitably.

Animals like rats are opportunistic predators. If they happen to come across accessible chickens on their nightly feeding run around, they might start nibbling on them and chicks especially. But if your coop is secure from predators with chicken wire or smaller mesh, then rats won't be able to have unfettered access to your chickens. And if they dig under because they are attracted to the feed or vegetable scraps, and they start making it a regular stop on their food rounds, they might discover the chickens are great snacks by happenstance! But they also may not ever think of it. Best would be to fill in the hole, dig some wire under and keep going.