feed costs

[Barnyard Dawg]

Our chickens don't eat the pine neddles they eat the pine nuts, I don't know what type of pine tree we have but they drop a soft pine nut every year and the chickens eat like cereal. I'll post a picture when they start dropping and maybe someone can identifly.

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

After some research I discovered it is not the pine nuts they are eating but the male cone or pollen cone. Similar to the second picture in the link I posted.

http://lovett-pinetum.org/pinecones.htm

 

[silkiechicken]

When my mom was back in china all they would feed the chickens were rice hulls from the field mixed with leaves. She said they never got big off of it but to be able to get meat was always a plus. I don't think feeding them just rice though will decrease egg size. It can reduce laying if they are lacking some nutrients though. I believe egg size is dependent on the physiological form of the hen's insides.

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

Quote:
When my wife and I were in China for 3 weeks the lady who took care of our chickens fed them commercial feed. The egg size definitely increased, my wife actually gave all the eggs away until she was able to feed them her diet and for them to go though the cycle change, people thought the eggs were wonderful, we still get large eggs but not jumbo.

 

[peacebird]

how much do you feed per bird? Just a guestimate so I will know how much rice to cook...... Do you add any mixed veggies to it? and if so are they cooked or raw?

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

Quote:
Rice bran from the outer skin of brown rice is processed into rice oil and used for cooking. Rice bran is also good as a pickling ingredient and as livestock feed. Before the turn of the century, when there was no such thing as beauty soap for the masses, women used it for skin care. Every woman had a small pouch filled with rice bran, and she washed her face and body with it when she took a bath. Rice bran is high in vegetable oil, protein, and vitamin B1. So it was indeed a wise and economical way to protect skin health.

Rice straw was an organic fertilizer and cooking fuel. Shredded and mixed with bran, it was used for chicken feed. When burned, it became ash for charcoal braziers and hearths. Rice straw was also woven into rope, containers, bags, hot pads, baskets, brooms, cradles, toys, sandals, snow boots, cushions, stools, various other handicrafts, and Shinto ceremonial ornaments.

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

Quote:
My wife prepares the rice in the rice cooker, which is usually full, off hand I don’t know how many cups she uses. We have 8 adult hens and 7 chicks currently. I will mix DE in with the rice, the vegetables are not cook but raw. They get plenty of oyster shell, and since they are free-range grass, bugs, and worms and whatever else they find in our creek. Now that we have our garden planted we grow a Chinese cabbage that we feed them along with tomato’s, squash leaves, sunflower seeds, etc, plus they enjoy our figs, blackberries and boysenberries and we will give them watermelon during the summer. They also like shrimp we buy the shrimp whole, head and all steam them they get the head and shell they gobble them up.

 

[allen wranch]

Dawg,
Your birds eat better than I do !

 

[silkiechicken]

Commercial feed is formulated for those indoor farm birds and would probably be perfectally balanced for massive egg production. I think I meant to say that by giving them a basis of rice, they don't get the same nutritional content of the feed and that causes eggs to be just large rather than jumbo. Not saying that is bad for the hens though as it is much less processed. Vitamin A is lacking in white rice though so as long as they eat other goodies it will be fine. As for my mom in china... that was many years ago in communist china... where there was one out house for the whole community and if you got a phone call, you would go to the main post office to get it...my mom has lots of funny/sad stories from her early years... like the "manuer man" who would collect human waste every night to toss out on the fields... the same ones she had to walk in to push down weeds and then later pick leeches off her feet...

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

Quote:
silkiechicken I would love to hear more of the stories your mother has shared with you. My wife was born in China and as a little girl they also had a shared restroom across the street from where their home was. She has told me about the shortage of fertilizers or depleted soil and how they would use human waste to enhance the soil. My wife as a young lady got a job in a chicken processing plant for about 3 months until she acquired an office job for the government as a food inspector shipping food all over the world and having 2 major restaurants she is a busy amazing woman.