Birds wasting soybean meal

[Folly's place]

I think that chickens are meant to 'graze' rather than inhale meals. They would be out there wandering around picking up plants, scratching for bugs and worms, and generally being busy getting food in small quantities for hours every day. For that reason alone, I think that offering two or three twenty minute meals per day is not as good, or natural for the birds.
I have no idea if there's any research to back me up, but that's what I think. Also, coming from a background in admittedly totally different species, horses and cattle need that grazing time.
Mary

 

[Folly's place]

House birds and rodent pets fed mixed grain diets absolutely will pick out the good tasting stuff, and eat an unbalanced diet. Fatty livers, for sure. Also birds with prolapses and egg binding.
Mary

 

[Cindy in PA]

A grain mash takes longer to eat & reduces pecking. There is no problem with them just picking out grains if you make them eat the stuff in the tray & don't let the grain portions fall down until they do. I do that & take the leftover stuff out of the feeder every 2-3 days & feed it wet the next day. They clean up the wet stuff in an hour or so. My local grain organic mash is fresher than any stuff sold in the store & cheaper also. Mash is a bit more hassle, but not as much as feeding fermented food every day. I like pellets, but my chickens like grain mash more.

 

[rebrascora]

I think it may depend on the type of feeder used with regard to a grain feed. If they are able to bill it out and pick through it to only eat the bits they like then the remainder will either get spoilt on the ground or be consumed by rodents and you wouldn't want to force them to clean up the spoilt stuff on the ground by removing the feeder because it could be turning mouldy and make them sick. I guess, if you have the sort of feeder where they can't bill it out and maybe can't see the individual particles because it is too dark with their head inside the feeder... like those plastic pipe ones, it may be fine but I can see circumstances where they could pick and choose and the OP in this thread is clearly having that problem with it.

 

[Molpet]

I think that chickens are meant to 'graze' rather than inhale meals. They would be out there wandering around picking up plants, scratching for bugs and worms, and generally being busy getting food in small quantities for hours every day. For that reason alone, I think that offering two or three twenty minute meals per day is not as good, or natural for the birds.
I have no idea if there's any research to back me up, but that's what I think. Also, coming from a background in admittedly totally different species, horses and cattle need that grazing time.
Mary

I agree that they 'graze' all day and when I left pellets in the feeder all day they would come back about every 2 hrs and eat pellets... How ever the only layer hen that just up and died for no good reason, when i opened her up had so much internal fat. Her heart and liver was packed with it too. I decided they needed to go on a diet... The cx hen I held back and died at almost a year, died of heart issues,.. which is common in them.. but she didn't have any excessive internal fat... a 1/2 cx son died of ascitics at 14 months, which is also common in cx, but also didn't have excessive fat... this winters harvest of cockerels, after being fed 3x a day was overly fat.

The big bag of organic pellets at the stores near me is never less than 6 months old..one store has always had food over a year old..one feed store only has 5lb bags, but they are fresh LOL.. the feed mill grinds it for me and I pick it up the next day.. in the winter I get 3 months worth because the mill is a 150 mile round trip. I fed 150lbs a week in the beginning of winter. 60 some chickens and 5 turkeys ..

In the summer they go out and graze for a couple of hours before I feed them and then they go back out... sometimes they find so much they hardly eat any feed...I pick up what they haven't eaten now... they find fallen birds nest after storms, mice nests, grasshopper will drift in and I have the japanese beetle traps in their yard, acorns and falled fruit is another thing they will fill up on. So they do fill up and quit grazing in nature too

 

[farmerbrowne]

I realize that but you have to consider the fact rhat winters are cold and they don't do much other than eat as foraging is out of the question, fat will build slightly. I had to butcher on of my Roos and he had I'd say a medium amount of fat. Not doing that again in -30!