feeding corn

[hdowden]

how much is to much and should you feed it whole, cracked, or fresh off the cob? i have some asking questions about this but i can't remember all the details about corn just that you shouldn't feed them that much because it can kill and i don't remember if it was cracked corn or whole corn...

 

[Chris09]

how much is to much and should you feed it whole, cracked, or fresh off the cob? i have some asking questions about this but i can't remember all the details about corn just that you shouldn't feed them that much because it can kill and i don't remember if it was cracked corn or whole corn...

I don't know where you herd that corn kill chickens but I will say that it will not kill your chickens, poultry feed is nearly or around 60% corn.
I feed no more than 10% "extras" and extras are anything other than there regular feed. I feed Whole Corn just because it is cheaper than the other types of corn.


Chris

 

[Nutcase]

Corn is fine for chickens but don't feed them too much in warm weather. They will become too hot. Just be generous with corn in cold weather as it will help your chickens generate more heat. I wish you the best of success

 

[Chris09]

Corn is fine for chickens but don't feed them too much in warm weather. They will become too hot. Just be generous with corn in cold weather as it will help your chickens generate more heat. I wish you the best of success

Corn will not make your chickens hot or help them "generate more heat" that is a old wives tail that will not die.

Chris

 

[Nutcase]

Well actually i have found that if given too much corn in hot weather they can overheat
But then, everyone has their own opinions and I respect yours

 

[centrarchid]

I feed whole corn because the nutrients are likely to me more stabile than in the cracked version and dried has a longer shelf-life than fresh. Make certain adequate amounts of grit available to ensure proper and rapid processing by gizzard.

With respect to heat generation, chickens are too small to be affected heat increment (heat released simply by process of digestion). Much larger animals can be impacted by such since the heat generated takes so much longer to escape owing to surface to volume ratio issues and makes a larger contibution relative to the animals overal metabolism since larger animals tend to have slower metabolic rates.

Corn does have a lot of energy in it relative to other nutrients thus can be considered more as an energy source than as a source of other types of nutrient like protein. Care must be taken to avoid feeding corn to excess as it can result in too much energy being ingested relative to other nutrients required by bird. Since a bird can consume only so much food during course of day, too much corn consumption can prevent adequate intake of more nutrtionally complete portion of ration. The 10% rule works well when intact corn is available all day but when temperatures get really low I will bump up inclusion rate to 25% but that is only for a few days in a row.

 

[hdowden]

i did find this:


We all love to give our hens treats. Unlike so many others in our lives, chickens are raucously grateful for the smallest offerings. But, I’ve seen a disturbing trend to over-indulgence in the feeding of backyard hens. You can make your chicken sick – or even kill her – with too many of the wrong treats. One food that chickens love is cracked corn. It’s like candy to them. But, it has no nutritional value other than calories. It’s okay to give a little in the winter when the weather is really cold, but otherwise it has no benefit. It does quickly make hens fat, which can lead to serious egg-laying glitches. So, as much as your girls are gleeful about cracked corn, don’t feed it.

http://hencam.com/faq/what-to-feed-your-chickens/

 

[Den in Penn]

"But, it has no nutritional values other than calories"
That's another myth that won't die about corn. It has nutritional values, just not the rights amount needed for a complete diet.

 

[kuntrygirl]

I feed a little bit of crack corn. It has 8% protein but that is not their entire diet. They eat a higher protein feed.

 

[Spangled]

how much is to much and should you feed it whole, cracked, or fresh off the cob? i have some asking questions about this but i can't remember all the details about corn just that you shouldn't feed them that much because it can kill and i don't remember if it was cracked corn or whole corn...

We make our own feed and we use(d) (depending on availability) it at 10% -20% of the entire feed. It's a average/good source of Vit A and lends a lot of palatability to a complete feed.

I understand it to be 9% protein and it's not a complete protein. It cannot be used as the only feed for chickens. All the other nutrients necessary for good health must be supplied. Some of the recipes I have seen show 40% of the feed mix can be corn, but I haven't looked at them all.

I use whole corn for scratch ... as in, toss it out on ground. But I rarely do this because we use organic corn and it's pricey. I also make sure that non-soluable grit is available. Granite usually.

I could never get the chickens to be normal in their eating practices when corn was involved in a scratch mix put in the feeder. If I put corn, wheat, barley, millet, oats in a feeder, they would throw everything on the floor looking for corn until all the wheat, barley, millet, and oats were on the ground and the corn was all eaten and the feeder was empty. I gave up on that a long time ago. Now I use it mostly just to herd them hither and yon as necessary, the same way I use sunflower seeds. Being careful not to give them too much because it's my view that they can get over fat and it can hurt their liver, giving them fatty liver disease. But that's just what I happen to understand about nutrition. Other opinions vary because there are studies showing all sorts of things.

I don't feed cracked corn because it gets lost on the ground. I also don't see the necessity when I buy whole corn and then cracking it would be an extra unnecessary step -- but I am talking about adult standard chickens, not chicks. The corn that we mix in our feed is broken to the size of a wheat kernal and smaller.

I have fed corn on the cob plenty of times. But usually that is corn for us and I like to eat it so I'm a little stingy. Corn grown in the garden is people food. If you're talking about corn dried on the cob, we have given them corn that way, too. However, we did end up shelling it for some reason. I can't remember what it was. It was either because the chickens couldn't get the dried kernal off the cob or that I was afraid that the cob itself wasn't dry enough for storage and was afraid of mold, etc., because of the variety we planted. Surely there are people with more experience than I with corn on the cob for chickens! I hope they chime in.

What is it that you want to do with the corn? How are you working it into the chickens' overall feeding plan? Oh, and I have heard some experts say not to feed corn whole, but I couldn't understand why not and we have never had a problem here ... yet.