Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[featherz]

I love this thread.. Just had to put down a chicken an hour or so ago and I had 'oh, the folks on the OT thread would have killed this chicken a week or two ago' running through my head. Made me feel a bit better about the whole thing.

(she had fowl pox, which they can recover from, so I was giving her a chance - but she was deteriorating slowly)..

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but as for the feeding household scraps thing. There's quite a few threads on "don't feed your chickens XX or they will die" (mostly with regards to household scraps, not 'treats'). Anyone with longtime chicken experience found anything in real practice that will cause problems? I know I throw out 'poisonous' apple cores and they do fine (with 50 chickens, one or two cores don't go far).. My husband threw them a brownie a while back before I told him not to feed chocolate to the chickens. But I guess you can guess nothing bad happened.

 

[Fred's Hens]

I'll try to answer the last two questions about feeding hens, as if they were one, as both are concerned about diet.

I feed 17% protein. I've read many, many Ag studies and most conclude that 14% is the bare minimum for production hens. But, I also know that more and more protein kicks in the law of diminishing returns and potential complications. The 20%-24% feed causes most of my production hens to push out over-sized eggs. I just think it revs up their systems beyond what I'm looking for. I also believe there must be some renal system stress, although the studies on that are not as clear in my mind.

I personally do feed table scraps, but since we don't produce very much, by volume, as our household is just the two of us, one needs to be a be careful. Some table foods and left-overs, unused products, snack foods are too high in salt, for us and for the chickens. Left over meat scraps, fat, meat juices, vegetable scraps? Oh sure. But again, we simply don't produce enough of these things to constitute any significant portion of the feed.

 

[Gerry2011]

While the hens are in the coop laying my bcm roo is there. Like someone said (sorry, I can't find who it was to credit the comment) when they come off the nest he mounts them which my thought on that was, "OUCH!!"

. It also seems he is mounting guard while they are laying. During the time the hens are in the laying mode, the noise level is considerable! Between the ones who have laid, the ones who are announcing they are THINKING about laying and the "support" group the decibel level is high. Come to think of it these are the noisiest chickens I've ever had.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Something to remember on the "poisonous" feeds for the chickens. Some poisons may have long term effects, but many are flushed out of the system and do no harm as long as the concentrations are not too high. It is not about percents of things in certain foods or anything like that. It is about how much they eat in total. There are plenty of studies out there that show a chick can suffer damage to internal organs if they eat too much calcium. Occasionally that can be fatal, but the usual result is more long term. If you are providing all their food, they should not eat Layer. Studies have clearly shown that. But if they are raised by a hen and they get practically all their food from foraging, a few bites of Layer won't hurt them. It's total calcium, not what is in one bite. And it is a long term effect. For the calcium to do the damage, they would need to eat it several days in a row, not just once.

Many fruit seeds contain cyanide. That is a deadly poison. But it takes a certain amount of cyanide to cause a problem. I have absolutely no problem with chickens enjoying the fruit that falls from my fruit trees. They are not going to get enough cyanide from those apple seeds to cause a problem. I've got plum pits out of chickens gizzards when I process them. There are just not enough cyanide in one seed to cause a problem. When I make apple butter and get a whole lot of apple seeds, I dispose of them in a way the chickens cannot get to a big pile of pure apple seeds.

Uncooked beans can cause a problem. Cooking changes that posion where it is OK. When I cook beans, I pick through them and throw the bad ones on the compost pile where the chickens can get to them. There are so few, I'm not at all worried. When I pull my bean plants from the garden for the compost pile, they have some beans on them I missed or did not fully develop. I dont worry about that. When I harvest and pick through my dried beans, I get a lot of rejects. I dispose of these in a way the chickens do not find a big pile of dried uncooked beans.

So one point is that the effects may be long-term. Just because they did not drop dead immediately does not mean there is no damage. But the other point is moderation. It is good to know what might cause harm to chickens, but as long as you don't overdo it, it is probably not something to worry about. Would I kill or harm my chickens if I dumped those apple seeds or beans where they could get to them? Probably not, but why take a chance if I know it potentially could? But don't sweat the small stuff.

 

[galanie]

Quote:
The most sensible answer I've read to date about things chickens can't have. I have often suspected the same. Just because someones flock ate such-and-such and didn't die doesn't, to me, mean that this substance is completely harmless. Nor am I all that careful what they get ahold of. I'd never give them chocolate though, cause All Yer Chocolates Are Belong To Me!!!

 

[featherz]

Quote:
ROFL! SO true. I tend to think the same.. if they get a little of 'whatever', chances are good nothing bad will happen.. I tend to give them things like bread my husband won't eat, plain cooked rice we didn't finish, old plain pasta, etc. But if a giant chocolate cake needed to be tossed (horrors!!), I'd have to just toss it, not to the birds.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Quote:
There may be some truth to that but consider - in the wild, the flock continues to forage while a hen goes back to the nest to lay. After she's done, she calls out "hey where are you guys?"(egg song) and the others answer in kind. "here we are"
They continue to do it now even if they're all in a pen together.
I've even heard roosters make the same call when they're separated from the flock.

 

[Gypsi]

eeeek... I did a really bad thing to my first pullets, now my almost 2 year old hens. After about 2 months of medicated layena I wanted them off medicated feed, and since I had never heard of game bird feed (the non-layer is also non-medicated), I put them on regular layena. This would be 2 months before they began to lay. Could that be a part of the problems I have had after they turned a year old?

(problems including soft shelled eggs to the point of breaking, despite adequate calcium in feed and supplemental calcium)

Gypsi

 

[Fred's Hens]

Gypsi, you'd not likely know for certain without your bird be sent to a lab and cut apart, tested and examined.

The studies of calcium overload on a young pullet are extensive and easily read for one's self off the University Ag sites. Since the laying industry and the poultry genetics corporations have such a vested interest in this subject, it has gotten studied quite extensively. Bottom line? I've read a dozen of these studies and my mind is clear on the subject. I also don't believe it falls into the realm of "just one man's opinion" either. Since pullets and hens are my main poultry focus, I come down squarely within the anti high calcium for young birds crowd. Everyone has to make up their own minds on this subject. The research and the results are readily available. This isn't a mystery anymore.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Quote:
Once birds are grown, 16-17% protein is sufficient for good production. I up the protein during and immediately after a molt till the feathers look good.

Feed manufacturers make feed with a balance of minerals, vitamins, protein and fats for optimal nutrition for the animals they're intended. If you read the label, it normally states something to the effect (I'm paraphrasing)
"This is a complete feed and should be the sole ration, no supplement is needed."

So if you feed a significant amount of scratch or table scraps, that has to be taken into consideration.
You shouldn't need 20% unless those supplements make up more than 10% of the diet.
If you do feed 20%, half of the diet can be scratch grains, that will bring total protein down to about 16%.

It's a rare lush pasture that can supply significant nutrition for optimal production.
I don't know where you're located but around here there isn't any protein to be had foraging this time of year. Summer is much better but I don't calculate that unknown into the equation.