Chickens eating and drinking waaaaay more than I expected

[kristenm1975]

I've got three hens in a Catawba Converticoop on the front lawn and have been astounded to discover to that on top of daily treats varying amount from a handful of scratch to a two or three cups of leftover stir-fry for example, they are cleaning out about 8-10 cups of layer pellets and 3 gallons of water in 3 days!!! Yes, some of the feed is lost on the ground because I have yet to install hooks so it's off the grass, but still, that's a ton of food going somewhere besides the ground. I have 1/2 inch hardware cloth on the bottom, so there's no chance that other birds are sharing, and there never any holes under the edge of the run to indicate that any critters are digging in. I'm stymied!

I emptied out the nesting materials from the nest box they don't use anyway and put their feeder up there in hopes that they would have less room to kick the feed out. That's my latest idea. We'll see how that works. Does that feed consumption sound outrageous to you all?

 

[AtholCoop]

My money is mice.

Try feeding once or twice a day and see what happens. I know it sounds weird since chickens LOVE to eat mice, but I've had it happen with a coop that had a hardware cloth floor.

 

[Penturner]

I'm not certain about chickens because the rule sort of falls apart as birds get larger. But I have always used the rule of thumb that a bird will eat it's own weight in food every day. for very small bird this is actually true but a 6 or 7 lb chicken would most likely not be able to do that. 3 birds and 10 cups of food for 3 days. I'm haveing a bit of a time trying to picture 10 cups. knowing how many pounds of feed that is would help.
Here are some other numbers I have picked up on just looking into producing some meet birds or what have you. 1 chicken 6 to 8 weeks to raise and about 50 lbs of feed. you are looking at about 1 lb of feed per chicken per day or so. Birds go through a lot more food than you would think.

 

[Whitewater]

Well, let's see.

1c=8oz.

1lb=16 oz

so

2c=1lbs

so . . .

(doing math in my head, muttering to myself . . . )

10c would be 5lbs.


I can't answer the actual question, but there's the math part of it for ya!



Whitewater

 

[Chris09]

It's 2 1/2 quarts of feed.

It is going to be hard to convert a liquid measurement (cups, quarts, gallons) to a dry measurement (oz. lbs, tons), when different grains have different weights. A cup of corn will weigh different than a cup of oats and the same holds true with premixed feeds..

Chris

 

[digitS']

My feed weighs about 1/3 pound per cup.

Your 3 chickens are eating 9 cups over 3 days or 3 cups each day. That is 1 cup or 1/3 pound for each chicken, daily.

One-third to one-half pound of food each day is about normal for dual-purpose birds.

Steve

 

[Penturner]

Quote:
Sorry, it doesn't quite work that way. you are mixing volume measurements to weight measurements and they do not transfer. Would two cups of feathers weigh a lb?
What you need to do is find out how much a cup of feed does weigh then go from there. You also might be able to find info on what to feed in volume measurements as well.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

Measuring cups measure fluid ounces. The metric people are laughing now, aren't they.

 

[noitulover]

i've got just under 18 chickens in 1 coop (4 are bantams) and they eat maybe 50lb of food in 2 weeks?

since 4 are bantams (and 2 are very, very small japs), let's assume that 2 bantams equal 1 Large Foul... not sure how accurate, but let's assume..

i basically have 16 chickens of equal size eating 50 pounds in 2 weeks.
they are eating 25lbs a week.
which is 3.57 pounds a day.
that means each chicken eats .22lbs a day... just under a quarter of a pound..

of course, sometimes i don't make it the whole two weeks without buying another 50lb bag, so i'm assuming they all eat about a 1/4 of a pound per day...

we also feed maybe 2-4 cups worth of scraps every day or every other day... as well as let them free range for several hours a day, and on weekends they free range all day, so that will mean they eat less on weekends...


if they are eating about 9 cups every 3 days, divided by 3 hens, that is roughly 1 cup a day, which i think is rather a small amount for them to be eating if they are not free-ranging as well... i wouldn't worry about it!


(ALTHOUGH ALL INFO IS SUBJECT TO WHICH BREEDS YOU HAVE... MY BIG FAT ORPINGTONS AND AUSTRALORPS CERTAINLY EAT MORE THAN SOME OF THE SMALLER HENS... SOME BREEDS ARE BETTER AT FORAGING, AND SOME OF THE BIG FAT LAZY HENS ARE BETTER AT JUST EATING FROM A FEEDER ALL DAY)

 

[patman75]

I have a Catawba Converticoop and the chicken food was disappearing too quick last summer. I thought at first it was a mouse problem but after cleaning out the nest boxes there was nothing. One night i walked outside with a spot light to see to see if there was any critter eating the food. To my surprise there was 4 raccoons around the coop and one was sticking his hand through the 2X3 wire and grabbing the food. I caught him in mid bite and the look on their faces was like "OH CR AP!" and they ran for the woods. After a few days of the live trap out, I had caught all of them and the disappearing food stopped.

I was nice to know that the raccoons could not break in and get the chickens.