Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

Nicely done! You are clearly skilled at carpentry. But you may have misunderstood Lilly. I assume she was trying to mess with the others so she may not actually appreciate this ‘improvement’!

Now that I had never thought of. Uh oh. I hope she's not mad at me.

 

[LozzyR]

Overweight is one of the concerns. Plain rice is unlikely to to make them fat.
It's the accumulation of fat on the internal organs that is the problem and we don't see this until they die and a necropsy is done.
The problem with treats isn't so much that it makes the chicken fat, it's they don't eat as much of the food that provides the correct amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Diet health is about variety and balance and a little knowledge of the nutrient content of the foodstuff.
There are certain foods that give the required range of amino acids to make a complete protein.as well as the enzymes needed for digestion. Meat, fish eggs and milk are obvious ones. Dairy produce isn't something that a chicken would normally eat, so that leaves meat and fish. You could remove all the grain feeds and assuming the chicken free ranges just supply meat and they would be fine. The vegetable content they need would be acquired in forage.
Meal worms for example provide a complete protein but are very high in fat. In normal feeding for a chicken be it feral of or one of the breeds of game fowl large quantiles of any individual foodstuff are rare. Chickens are foragers and as such tend to find small amounts of whatever they eat, not a dinner plate full in one sitting.
Their digestive system is different from ours in that it is constantly on; it's designed to cope with constant input during the day and while they are resting the food in the crop drips into the digestive tract overnight.
It's about supplying a balanced food even as treats. A chicken with a crop full of rice will feel full but rice doesn't have all the essential amino acids to make a complete protein. The same applies to pasta and most other foods. They need to be mixed with something else.
I believe @micstrachan could tell you some sad stories about giving too many of the wrong kind of treats.
A little of just about anything is fine; platefuls of food that doesn't have the correct nutritional content isn't.
Unfortunately this isn't a message many want to hear. People like giving their chickens treats but the truth is they are often shortening the chickens lifespan.

Do you know of somewhere that advises the correct percentage of food items? I know the layer feed I get is meant to be a complete food, but as the girls have been out all day every day for the last month they’re eating a lot of grass and weeds, plus they really like their wheat grain sprouts. I know you said that grains aren’t traditional chicken fare, but is it not good for them?

 

[BY Bob]

Other Changes

I finally took down Maleficent's silhouette from the front of the coop.

Good news, there is room for 3 more silhouettes. I wasn't sure.

I then started a memorial board in the run with a piece of plywood left from the nest box job. I want to paint it white and put an "In Memory" header on it but this should work.

Gone but not forgotten..

 

[Shadrach]

Do you know of somewhere that advises the correct percentage of food items? I know the layer feed I get is meant to be a complete food, but as the girls have been out all day every day for the last month they’re eating a lot of grass and weeds, plus they really like their wheat grain sprouts. I know you said that grains aren’t traditional chicken fare, but is it not good for them?

Pretty much everything is fine in small amounts Lozzy.
I don't know of anywhere on the Internet that will provide a guide by food items. It's something one has to learn about by investigating what foods contain what.
Commercial feeds such as layer feed are fine in that they will supply all the essential amino acids to make a complete protein. If your chickens are foraging outside then they are probably finding the correct supplements that the commercial feed is missing.
I don't know how to explain all this in an easy way and not cause alarm.
There are lots of sources of amino acids and various combinations will make a complete protein. The feed companies use grains because they are cheap, not because they are the best possible option for health. Bear in mind that the vast majority of commercially produced feeds were designed for high egg production hens that would be slaughtered as soon as their maximum egg production started to decrease. In general, this is in the hens second to third year. There has been little research into what combinations of foods lead to the longest life.
Longevity has never been a concern in commercial feed production.
A human can stay alive by eating a very limited range of foodstuffs. We (humans) need eight amino acids to support life. You could supply all of these eight amino acids in some kind of drink, but eventually your health would suffer because things like dietary roughage, certain minerals and vitamins that we get from eating a range of foods would either be missing or not there in sufficient quantities. For free range chickens, assuming there is a decent mix of vegetation diet isn't such an issue. I feed the chickens here commercial feed as a back up and means of control. For example, the more feed I supply, the less they need to forage. The less time they are out in the open foraging, the less of a target they present to predators.
Some of the chickens here eat a comparatively small amount of commercial feed; usually before they go to roost to top up their crop supply. The bigger dual purpose breeds like Fat Bird eat more of the commercial feed than say Donk who is a hybrid and could survive quite well on what she can forage.
Chickens if my memory serves me require one less amino acid then humans but even that is subject to debate. If a particular food supplies humans with a complete set of amino acids then it will for chickens as well. So, the place to start is what supplies what for humans.
You cannot go far wrong with lean meat and fish as a treat. I often give walnuts as a treat, but not in handfuls, maybe half a walnut broken into pieces for one chicken. A similar rule applies to the meat and fish I give; maybe half an cubic inch of fish or meat per chicken.

It gets more difficult for chickens that are confined in a run. They do not have access to a sufficient range of forage to balance their diet. Centrarchid here on BYC estimates he needs around one acre per bird to give all year round forage without providing some commercial feed. This is fairly close to the area a pair of jungle fowl will defend as their territory and the territory is about forage opportunities more than anything else.
Here, were the forage is good most of the year it works out at about an acre per tribe, but I have always supplied some commercial feed.
Diet is a highly complex business and diet for longevity in chickens has not been well studied. The game fowl keepers here where I live make their own feeds but they have generations of knowledge behind them. Most include some meat or fish in their diet.

 

[RoyalChick]

Other Changes

I finally took down Maleficent's silhouette from the front of the coop.

View attachment 2098606

Good news, there is room for 3 more silhouettes. I wasn't sure.

I then started a memorial board in the run with a piece of plywood left from the nest box job. I want to paint it white and put an "In Memory" header on it but this should work.

View attachment 2098620

Gone but not forgotten..
View attachment 2098629
View attachment 2098630

I love it! I had a similar idea to do an RIP board as well as an ‘in residence’ board. I was going to do it with left over lumber from building the Palace so haven’t started yet.

 

[BY Bob]

Pretty much everything is fine in small amounts Lozzy.
I don't know of anywhere on the Internet that will provide a guide by food items. It's something one has to learn about by investigating what foods contain what.
Commercial feeds such as layer feed are fine in that they will supply all the essential amino acids to make a complete protein. If your chickens are foraging outside then they are probably finding the correct supplements that the commercial feed is missing.
I don't know how to explain all this in an easy way and not cause alarm.
There are lots of sources of amino acids and various combinations will make a complete protein. The feed companies use grains because they are cheap, not because they are the best possible option for health. Bear in mind that the vast majority of commercially produced feeds were designed for high egg production hens that would be slaughtered as soon as their maximum egg production started to decrease. In general, this is in the hens second to third year. There has been little research into what combinations of foods lead to the longest life.
Longevity has never been a concern in commercial feed production.
A human can stay alive by eating a very limited range of foodstuffs. We (humans) need eight amino acids to support life. You could supply all of these eight amino acids in some kind of drink, but eventually your health would suffer because things like dietary roughage, certain minerals and vitamins that we get from eating a range of foods would either be missing or not there in sufficient quantities. For free range chickens, assuming there is a decent mix of vegetation diet isn't such an issue. I feed the chickens here commercial feed as a back up and means of control. For example, the more feed I supply, the less they need to forage. The less time they are out in the open foraging, the less of a target they present to predators.
Some of the chickens here eat a comparatively small amount of commercial feed; usually before they go to roost to top up their crop supply. The bigger dual purpose breeds like Fat Bird eat more of the commercial feed than say Donk who is a hybrid and could survive quite well on what she can forage.
Chickens if my memory serves me require one less amino acid then humans but even that is subject to debate. If a particular food supplies humans with a complete set of amino acids then it will for chickens as well. So, the place to start is what supplies what for humans.
You cannot go far wrong with lean meat and fish as a treat. I often give walnuts as a treat, but not in handfuls, maybe half a walnut broken into pieces for one chicken. A similar rule applies to the meat and fish I give; maybe half an cubic inch of fish or meat per chicken.

It gets more difficult for chickens that are confined in a run. They do not have access to a sufficient range of forage to balance their diet. Centrarchid here on BYC estimates he needs around one acre per bird to give all year round forage without providing some commercial feed. This is fairly close to the area a pair of jungle fowl will defend as their territory and the territory is about forage opportunities more than anything else.
Here, were the forage is good most of the year it works out at about an acre per tribe, but I have always supplied some commercial feed.
Diet is a highly complex business and diet for longevity in chickens has not been well studied. The game fowl keepers here where I live make their own feeds but they have generations of knowledge behind them. Most include some meat or fish in their diet.

I trust mine to eat what they need from the source they desire. What I see is them tanking up on commercial feed in the morning and before bed. When the yard is available for free ranging they typically do not eat commercial feed at another time during the day. With me home all the time now, they are free ranging from 8 am to dusk. I am using a lot less commercial feed than normal. These 6 hens are getting a lot of food from my 1/3 acre without stripping it bare.

 

[BY Bob]

I love it! I had a similar idea to do an RIP board as well as an ‘in residence’ board. I was going to do it with left over lumber from building the Palace so haven’t started yet.

Thank you. I had to do something.

 

[RoyalChick]

Overweight is one of the concerns. Plain rice is unlikely to to make them fat.
It's the accumulation of fat on the internal organs that is the problem and we don't see this until they die and a necropsy is done.
The problem with treats isn't so much that it makes the chicken fat, it's they don't eat as much of the food that provides the correct amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Diet health is about variety and balance and a little knowledge of the nutrient content of the foodstuff.
There are certain foods that give the required range of amino acids to make a complete protein.as well as the enzymes needed for digestion. Meat, fish eggs and milk are obvious ones. Dairy produce isn't something that a chicken would normally eat, so that leaves meat and fish. You could remove all the grain feeds and assuming the chicken free ranges just supply meat and they would be fine. The vegetable content they need would be acquired in forage.
Meal worms for example provide a complete protein but are very high in fat. In normal feeding for a chicken be it feral of or one of the breeds of game fowl large quantiles of any individual foodstuff are rare. Chickens are foragers and as such tend to find small amounts of whatever they eat, not a dinner plate full in one sitting.
Their digestive system is different from ours in that it is constantly on; it's designed to cope with constant input during the day and while they are resting the food in the crop drips into the digestive tract overnight.
It's about supplying a balanced food even as treats. A chicken with a crop full of rice will feel full but rice doesn't have all the essential amino acids to make a complete protein. The same applies to pasta and most other foods. They need to be mixed with something else.
I believe @micstrachan could tell you some sad stories about giving too many of the wrong kind of treats.
A little of just about anything is fine; platefuls of food that doesn't have the correct nutritional content isn't.
Unfortunately this isn't a message many want to hear. People like giving their chickens treats but the truth is they are often shortening the chickens lifespan.

Makes sense. The stink bugs I give with the rice probably help!

 

[RoyalChick]

I trust mine to eat what they need from the source they desire. What I see is them tanking up on commercial feed in the morning and before bed. When the yard is available for free ranging they typically do not eat commercial feed at another time during the day. With me home all the time now, they are free ranging from 8 am to dusk. I am using a lot less commercial feed than normal. These 6 hens are getting a lot of food from my 1/3 acre without stripping it bare.

The funny thing is if I give them commercial feed by hand they think it is a treat. Which is why I don’t really get them treats!

 

[BY Bob]

The funny thing is if I give them commercial feed by hand they think it is a treat. Which is why I don’t really get them treats!

As fast as they eat, I don't believe that your hens taste anything they eat. You could probably feed them dirt in your hand and they would gobble it down.