Cracked corn

[Book Em Danno25]

Does feeding cracked corn help chickens in any way. I have heard that it has no nutritional value and all it does is stretch the feed?

It also keeps the birds warmer in the winter. We use it all the time in the winter, especially when its really cold.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

My father has a large gas engine powered corn grinder he uses for making cornmeal a couple of hundred pounds at a time. He always gives me a bag for "the girls". I mix it with enough water to make a thick paste/dough, and the girls love it!

 

[kocho]

Glad I found this thread. We ran out of chicken food yesterday and tractor supply and anyway were both closed. So we stopped at the pet store and picked up cracked corn and meal worms to get us through.

 

[RonP]

It also keeps the birds warmer in the winter. We use it all the time in the winter, especially when its really cold.

A warm blooded animal burns calories to generate body heat. Corn has a lot of useless calories. It will not provide all the necessary elements in a chickens diet to promote good health.

I also love corn, in the summertime it does not make me any warmer than the pasta salad...

Glad I found this thread. We ran out of chicken food yesterday and tractor supply and anyway were both closed. So we stopped at the pet store and picked up cracked corn and meal worms to get us through.

Short term, birds should be fine, they will eat most anything. Long term, unless they have a complete diet nutritionally, their egg production, and health will suffer.

 

[CrazyTalk]

Corn has a lot of useless calories. It will not provide all the necessary elements in a chickens diet to promote good health.

Sorry - this particular part bugs me - Corn is one of the basic building blocks of chicken diet. Commercial diets/mixes are largely a mix of corn and soy - because they fill most of a chicken's nutritional requirements, and are a good, cheap source of protein and calories.

There's no need to feed your chickens cracked corn, or scratch - and generally you're doing them a disservice by feeding them anything but a proper food, but saying that corn is useless calories is a bit much.

 

[RonP]

Sorry - this particular part bugs me - Corn is one of the basic building blocks of chicken diet. Commercial diets/mixes are largely a mix of corn and soy - because they fill most of a chicken's nutritional requirements, and are a good, cheap source of protein and calories.

There's no need to feed your chickens cracked corn, or scratch - and generally you're doing them a disservice by feeding them anything but a proper food, but saying that corn is useless calories is a bit much.

What you say is correct, but please do not take my statements out of context.

As a grain, corn has a high caloric content, not necessarily bad, but still not a complete diet, agreed.

Extra "useless" calories are stored as fat, not heat.

 

[microchick]

Interesting thread.

I can remember my father when I was in my teens, urging me to go out into the field to glean corn for the chickens in the winter time and then for my horses once again in the winter. He was raised in the era where horses were used predominately for field work and although he was not an educated man, he had common sense knowledge and experience to fall back on. It helped them stay warm, he told me. I would never feed JUST corn to any animal, but I believe corn does have nutritional value for livestock when added in a small amount to feed.

A curious note. We feed our birds crumbles that we buy in 50 pound bags from the local MFA. They grind, blend and produce the food themselves and the layer feed has a whopping 20% of protein in it. The chickens love it. The other day I was looking at it closely and noted that there were small particles of ground corn in it. I'm sure that if corn didn't have nutritional value, it wouldn't be in that feed, especially since the feed boasts a protein level of 20%.

Chickens, like humans are omnivores. They will petty much eat anything that doesn't crawl away from them, although some chickens do have discriminating pallets when it comes to what they consider a meal or treat. Like humans they will eat stuff that isn't particularly healthy and nutritious but just plain tastes good to them...Put a bowl of M&Ms in front of me and they will not be around long. Same with our chickens. If I give them a bowl of cracked corn, they will gobble it down like it was M&Ms. Good for them? Probably not, but boy, does it taste good. So yes, I do add some cracked corn in with their layer feed. Not a lot, just a soft drink cup mixed in with 5 gallons of layer feed. It gives them something to scratch around for and when the small amount is gone I know that they will be having to eat their layer mix. The roosters are broad chested and the hens are beginning to lay eggs with strong hard shells. I also give them sunflower seeds sprinkled in the grass in their run as something to scratch around for.

I guess what I am saying is use common sense when you feed your birds. Treat them like children who don't necessarily know what is good for them over what tastes good.

And agree to disagree on this subject.

 

[CrazyTalk]

Corn 'keeps them warm' in the sense that corn is very sugar/calorie dense - and (like RonP said) warm blooded animals burn calories to keep warm. In the winter, warm blooded animals need significantly more calories than in the summer, and for chickens, forage is drastically reduced during that time. People use corn to supplement calories.

The only reason to feed corn or scratch is because it's cheaper than feeding mix - any time you'd feed them corn, the birds would be better of being fed a balanced mix. With horses it's the same - the corn is used as a cheap source of calories.

 

[RonP]

Actually, I think we all seem to agree, it's just semantics.

I "treat" my dozen or so birds with a handful, only a handful, of scratch (mostly corn) almost daily.

I do not do it because it is inexpensive. I do it because they love it.

Tossing it in their deep litter run keeps them busy digging and scratching, thus freshening up the run.

Poop just disappears ...

 

[kocho]

Short term, birds should be fine, they will eat most anything. Long term, unless they have a complete diet nutritionally, their egg production, and health will suffer.
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Thanks for the info. We went the next day and got the regular food. Just didn't want them to go without until we could get to t huh e feed store.