Changed to Flock Raiser, now they are eating more feed.

[KathyK]

Hi all. My birds are 15 weeks old. I had them on a local mill's grower feed with 18% protein. I changed because there was a lot of powder in the feed that they were not eating. I decided to try Purina Flock Raiser. They like it fine. In fact they are eating a lot more of it. Am I right to assume they are only eating what they need, and so they need more of this feed for the same nutrition?

 

[speckledhen]

Did the other feed you were using contain animal protein? I know FlockRaiser does not; none of the SunFresh recipes do from Purina.

 

[Shannon's Chix]

Good question, I was wondering the same. I had some on layer and some on starter. Put them together on flock raiser and they go through it really fast!

 

[ChooksChick]

I think the mills always use 'Hog44' to regulate protein in mixed grains- it's 44% protein...and you can guess the rest from the name.

That's part of the powder- the rest is soy meal and nutrient mixes. I ended up not using the local stuff because they couldn't get the protein high enough w/o the Hog44, and I'm not interested in eating eggs from the worst of the waste from processing plants.

I use Flock Raiser and BOSS and various greens and grains and Game Bird. It averages out about 20% protein from my calculations (eyeball guessing) and everyone does fine, but they eat a lot more feed when they can't graze.

I'm going to start growing my own meal worms, I think.

 

[KathyK]

No animal protein in the old feed. At least, not on the label. They are required to put it on the label, right? As in "animal protein" or somesuch? What is Boss?

 

[ChooksChick]

Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

I don't know if feed stores label or not, but their mix might just say 'nutritional supplements' to contain a bunch of their additives.

 

[KathyK]

LOL. Yeah, I use BOSS. How much should I give them? Daily? I've been tossing out about 3/4 cup every day or 2 for 11 chooks.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I feed Flock Raiser and balance it out with a tube feeder of whole corn and wheat. The birds will eat about 60% grain, 40% Flock Raiser and whatever they can forage from the pasture when I move their tractors every day. It's worked well for me for the last five or six years now.