Feeding silkie hens

[Fordi22]

Need to switch from medicated food to a laying hen food..what brand foods r the best? Go gmo free, organic crumble?

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

What's best is what's easily available to you and is fresh. A medicated feed should only be fed for the first 8-12 weeks. A layer shouldn't be fed until all birds are laying, and should only be fed to actively laying birds. You can just keep your silkies on a non medicated starter grower, and add in a separate bowl of oyster shells for the calcium needs when they are close to laying.

 

[chickens really]

I feed mine a Grower finisher feed at 16% and provide oyster shell separated in another bowl once layers..

 

[GC-Raptor]

Need to switch from medicated food to a laying hen food..what brand foods r the best? Go gmo free, organic crumble?

Are you in the continental US?
If you are. TSC, Tractor Supply Co, carries Purina Organic, Nature's Best Organic and DuMOR Organic (looks like it's made by Nature's Best). I don't feed organic. But I checked all 3 and like all 3.
They recently started to carry Non-GMO in several New Brands that I'm not familiar with.
I feed conventional feeds. I like Purina Premium, and Nutrena Naturewise, and I use both.
I buy whichever is fresher or available when I'm at TSC.

 

[NNYchick]

I feed all my Silkies a 18-20% protein flock raiser, gamebird grower or unmediated chick starter to everyone with oyster shells on the side. I always have more non-layers (broody, recovering broody, young pullets, chicks and roosters) that don’t need calcium. Also, Silkies are slow to mature usually not laying until around 7 months old and not prolific layers. On average I get about 14 eggs from a hen before she goes broody, then recovering from being broody about 6 weeks with no eggs if she doesn’t hatch chicks longer if she broods chicks then they start the cycle over. So I just feel like they don’t need a lot of extra calcium. I don’t feed organic because it’s not popular around here so most of the time the available bags are older than I like to buy. I like my food to be manufactured within 4 weeks of purchase. As far as brands I like nutrena or poulin grain. I used to be able to get southern states flock balancer and that was my go to but lost the distributor up here.