Free range chicken feed

[CedarRanch]

Just wanted to share this little discovery I made. I have a flock of 20 hens who are a variety of different breeds. They all have been free ranged their entire lives. I have always gotten far fewer eggs than friends who lock their chickens up. No hidden nests. Even when I did lock them in the coop for a couple days there was no increase in eggs. After hearing a friend tell me she was still getting 2 dozen eggs a day while mine had dropped to 1-4 eggs a day I started really digging into what could be wrong. After a little (or a lot ) of googling I decided to deworm. Kept them all locked up and dewormed all of them. Still nothing. I then found out that it might be their feed. I’ve always fed kalmbach nongmo laying feed. I decided to switch to a 21% protien feed. I am all of a sudden getting 5-7 eggs a day, which is still not much but we are in the dead of winter. But at least two hens who haven’t laid for months are now laying.

Has anyone else heard of free ranging hens needing higher protein feed? I’m so excited to see what spring brings when we aren’t dealing with short days and molting hens.

 

[FrostRanger]

We just passed the winter solstice so I think that may have more to do with it than a change in feed. As long as the feed is nutritionally sound, feed has little influence on laying. Higher protein is still beneficial in general though so I'd still keep them on the feed. As for why your friend's birds have been laying well, that can be due to several factors including age, breed, presence of artificial light and just plain luck that she got birds that happen to be good winter layers

 

[CedarRanch]

We just passed the winter solstice so I think that may have more to do with it than a change in feed. As long as the feed is nutritionally sound, feed has little influence on laying. Higher protein is still beneficial in general though so I'd still keep them on the feed. As for why your friend's birds have been laying well, that can be due to several factors including age, breed, presence of artificial light and just plain luck that she got birds that happen to be good winter layers

Egg increase happened before winter solstice.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Just wanted to share this little discovery I made. I have a flock of 20 hens who are a variety of different breeds. They all have been free ranged their entire lives. I have always gotten far fewer eggs than friends who lock their chickens up. No hidden nests. Even when I did lock them in the coop for a couple days there was no increase in eggs. After hearing a friend tell me she was still getting 2 dozen eggs a day while mine had dropped to 1-4 eggs a day I started really digging into what could be wrong. After a little (or a lot ) of googling I decided to deworm. Kept them all locked up and dewormed all of them. Still nothing. I then found out that it might be their feed. I’ve always fed kalmbach nongmo laying feed. I decided to switch to a 21% protien feed. I am all of a sudden getting 5-7 eggs a day, which is still not much but we are in the dead of winter. But at least two hens who haven’t laid for months are now laying.

Has anyone else heard of free ranging hens needing higher protein feed? I’m so excited to see what spring brings when we aren’t dealing with short days and molting hens.

Well, I’m not sure about the whole seasonality thing. Forage generally drops a lot in availability in late autumn and winter, so free-rangers need more feed, period, to make up for the missing calories.

But yes, layer feed is often lower in protein, around 16%, than all-flock, often around 20%.

Layer feed nutritional levels are often tilted toward production/battery chickens, with an emphasis on maximum output for minimum cost (and nutrition.)

Many of us here on BYC don’t use layer feed at all, or we combine it with all-flock to increase the protein level. You just have to be sure to keep plenty of supplemental calcium available on the side in the form of oyster shell (plus crushed egg shell if you want, but oyster shell is a must.)

Don’t mix the calcium into their feed. Just keep it always available on the side. Somehow, chickens know how much and how little of nutrients they need.

 

[FrostRanger]

For what it's worth, mine haven't been laying much for months because first, our summers are extremely hot so that stressed them enough to make them stop, then they went into molt during fall and hens don't lay during molt and now the days are just plain too short. They get the same 20% protein feed they've always been. I had one pullet years ago that started laying when the days were at their shortest. All that to say egg laying is a fickle thing that is often influenced by things out of our control and life is often unpredictable

 

[nuthatched]

Very few environments can provide the nutritional needs for modern laying hens, unless you have feral bands of chickens running around, you're likely not in one of those areas.