free choice feeding--no go!

[SandraChick]

Have you considered that you may have rodents also eating your feed?

THe only time I've gone through a lot of feed...was followed by trapped rats...followed by "normal" amounts of feed being eaten. Oh...and they (rats) don't only eat food at night.....

Sandra

 

[NC chicken man]

I will agree I set some traps yesterday and got a rat nearly a foot long seen him the other day and said I've got to do something ,well I will see how many I can get ,I feed free choice too 300# at a time.

 

[polychickens]

Every now and then, I'll see a couple of mice. I toss the cat in the coop for a couple days/nights and they are gone. Usually it only takes an hour or 2, but I figure there may be more that have stayed under the radar, so I keep my mouser on the hunt. I have never ever seen a rat on my property.

Come to think of it, the mice do their thing at night. The feed gets eaten by mid day usually. I honestly don't think my occasional mouse is eating a significant amount of feed.

Today I poured in 30# and there is some left. I let the chickens free range in the yard all day. They found tons of worms in the leaves piled throughout the garden, so the food is stretched. I'll continue to experiment.

My egg production reached an all time low of 5 today. Using the recommended feeding rate on the commercial bag--10 lbs/day for my flock-- eggs cost me $.30 EACH in feed alone right now. Considering they are overeating lately, it is probably costing upwards of $5.00 to produce a dozen eggs. Non-organic!

Hopefully by spring, they'll be back up to over 30/day like a few weeks ago...if my wife lets me keep them that long. Lots of grumbling about bleeding money, lowered production, high feed costs lately. This is an expensive hobby!

Hopefully your mileage varies!
PC

 

[LoneCowboy]

A lot of chickens slow down production in the winter. Are you adding extra light to the coop? They should be getting 14 hours for best production. Also, they usually don't lay if they are starting to go through a molt.

 

[silkiechicken]

Time of year. If you really need the eggs up, add a light to the coop to get it to be 16 hours a day. That should get them going again.

 

[Dodgegal79]

LOL, don't feel so bad, I'm feeding about 100 ducks and chickens, I go through almost 350 -400lbs of food a week, and the only thing i'm getting back is lots of fertilizer on the lawn. The snow and ice don't help, nothing aound to supplement their diet. I have a bunch of Muscovy drakes almost ready to slaughter, so I should have some return in the next couple of weeks.

 

[panner123]

This should solve your problem. Figure the number of chickens (45) times .358076 (amount of feed per day) times the number of days (9). This will be the amount of feed they should eat in nine days. (145.02078
lbs.) Being it is winter I would put some extra out and call it 175 lbs for nine days.

 

[Queen of the Lilliputians]

I'm surprised that you say free choice isn't working for those breeds.

I have.. um.. 15 chickens in the coop. 10 are Big Girls (RIR, NHR, BRs) and they lay 8-10 eggs per day. the other 5 are bantam, or a little bigger size. They've always been fed free choice.

They are eating nearly twice the feed right now as they did summer/fall, but I know it's because they need the calories to keep warm. They also get cracked corn in the AM.

Hubby made a booboo.. he doesn't usually do chicken chores, but he thought he'd 'help' me one morning. Apparently he didn't realize that the amount of corn they get really isn't very much (they finish it in about 10-15min.. none left over). He gave them WAYYYY too much. They ate what they wanted.. and left the rest. It was CORN! Their #2 favorite! But they were full, and didn't want it. I've never really had a problem with my ladies gorging and gorging. The only time they've ever *appeared* to is if I've let the feeder empty before adding the new bag. They all act like they are starving (which they never are.. silly girls!).

Maybe your ladies aren't used to having food down all the time? (my cats are like that.. would eat the entire bag of catfood if I let them because they are not used to having that option and so are opportunistic eaters) If you give them a few weeks would it loose it's "excitement" for them, and they'd move on to something more interesting?

JMHO. Good luck! Can't imagine a 9 day vaca! Hope you are going somewhere terrific!

Meghan

 

[kstaven]

Hey dodgegal, what are you feeding those birds? I'm over 120 hens and feeding freechoice. They go through a lot less feed than yours. Mostly large heritage breeds also.

Only time I ever went through feed like you are was when I had critters getting into it.

 

[picklespickles]

some people who don't want to pay to overwinter birds, process them in the fall or winter when they slow laying. then start over in the spring. you might not want to do this, but some folks do.