Feeding advice during motling

[kjfrogster41]

My RIR's have just started molting. They are approximately 8 months old. I feed them organic layer pellets and give them a morning breakfast mix of brown rice, veggies, sweet corn, pasta and occasional small curd cottage cheese. All food we feed them is organic. We also throw in some meal worms and sun flower seeds during the day and they are out most of the day, when there's no snow, foraging. Is there any thing else I should add to this mix when they are molting?

 

[scratch'n'peck]

Extra protein is good for feather development. You could add more cottage cheese and meal worms, or if they are laying and you have extra eggs you could scramble some eggs for them.

 

[kjfrogster41]

Thanks for your reply, ScratchnPeck. We all appreciate it. The girls are particularly pleased that you advocated for additional meal worms. Frankly, I think they have a bit of an addiction problem with those. I do try to keep the amount limited and don't feed them the worms too often but will step up the amount until they finish with their molts.

 

[mcjessen]

I have one Barred Rock who lost all of her cushion (the area below her vent). I have been giving her and the two other girls a bit of canned tuna in the mornings. Within a week of starting that, the BR's feathers started coming back in. I'm not giving them a lot - probably 2 TBS to share between 3 birds. I was surprised how quickly her feathers came back in.