Pathfinders, Echoinghills, and Muddstopper - thank you for the replies on the feather picking. I'm thinking that we had some concurrent issues that led to the feather picking; the birds are getting bigger and more crowded, they are getting bored, and we changed feeds to both lower and non-animal protein.
Trying to stop this behavior, we have opened the door to the outside so they can free-range, added cat food to their food for increased protein/animal protein, and started throwing corn cobs in their pen to give them something else to pick on.
They seemed to be responding well, last night I didn't see any feather picking. But about the cat food (I read on another thread about feeding cat food and tried to do a search on this thread but didn't get anything to come up), am I doing something wrong by feeding them the cat food? And are there preferred cat foods I should be using? This said 30% protein and animal - so I got it.
Also, we will be going back to the grain mill on Friday, if they don't have turkey or game bird starter again, any suggestions on what to buy? Obviously not the 24% organic feed for the buckeyes - at 13 weeks what's best to be feeding them? Also, once they start laying, what's it best to feed them - the layers feed is not really high in protein either - or do they just need higher protein while they're growing up?
