I posted this question in the "feeding your flock" section and they suggested I ask here. Sorry Admins if I break any rules. Here was my question....
My chickens are about 6-7 weeks old. We feed them three times a day. When we get up they get start-n-grow, in the afternoon I give them scratch grains and in the evening they get more start-n-grow. They have access to ground so they eat any bugs that are dumb enough to crawl into the pen and since we have found they like to eat grass my husband and daughter will go out and pluck handfulls of grass and throw it in there for them to eat. (since right now their pen is in a dirt patch. We will be expanding in a couple of weeks so they will have more room and grass.) We plan on keeping some for reproduction and eggs but some we were planning on putting in the freezer. The thing is I thought we were giving them plenty of food. I mean the two times a day they get the start-n-grow we give them an entire gallon bucket of feed. And yet they still seem kind of thin. Is it a summer thing? Like they wont get very big during the summer or is it that they are still so young? We have 31 birds. Should we be giving them more food? I want them to have happly lives before we butcher them and I want the ones we are going to keep be healthy and be good producers for us. What should I do or should I even be concerned?
My chickens are about 6-7 weeks old. We feed them three times a day. When we get up they get start-n-grow, in the afternoon I give them scratch grains and in the evening they get more start-n-grow. They have access to ground so they eat any bugs that are dumb enough to crawl into the pen and since we have found they like to eat grass my husband and daughter will go out and pluck handfulls of grass and throw it in there for them to eat. (since right now their pen is in a dirt patch. We will be expanding in a couple of weeks so they will have more room and grass.) We plan on keeping some for reproduction and eggs but some we were planning on putting in the freezer. The thing is I thought we were giving them plenty of food. I mean the two times a day they get the start-n-grow we give them an entire gallon bucket of feed. And yet they still seem kind of thin. Is it a summer thing? Like they wont get very big during the summer or is it that they are still so young? We have 31 birds. Should we be giving them more food? I want them to have happly lives before we butcher them and I want the ones we are going to keep be healthy and be good producers for us. What should I do or should I even be concerned?
