Garden Weeds for feed

[Coldspringchicken]

I have been weeding my garden and giving it to my chickens as feed as well as kitchen scraps. They are luvin it and prefer it to the layer pellets.. Any thoughts this is my first flock. According to the feed store this is bad. They said only to give bagged feed and fresh water. Am i doing the right thing?

 

[Uzuri]

It doesn't surprise me that the feed store would say that -- if you're feeding them scraps, you're not buying feed

(Wish I could give you an actual yes or no, but I'm just starting myself. So I'll stick with cynical remarks

)

 

[Judy]

Nothing wrong with kitchen scraps and garden weeds -- in moderation. The pellets are a balanced diet. Scraps and weeds, for example, rarely have much protein content.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Of course the feed store told you that. They sell more feed that way.

Cynacism aside, the food you buy is balanced nutrition for the utmost in egg-laying. It is the most efficient in providing everything they need. If you feed them other things or let them free-range, they don't get a perfect balance. Is this bad? Well, I don't get a perfect balance either. Some days I am a little light on fruit or I may be heavy on starch if I eat pasta. It obviously has not stunted my growth and I should have stopped growing over 40 years ago. Key words, "should have".

The perfect balance from the grower will give you the same pale bland eggs that you can buy from the store. If you supplement their diet with greens, bugs, whatever, you get more flavor and color. There was an article in Mother Earth

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Relish/F … -Eggs.aspx

about the nutritional value of free-range eggs, byut some people have questioned the science behind this article. I'll not get any deeper into that.

Bottom line, in my opinion, if you feed them enough other stuff to get their diet way out of whack, you might effect egglaying. But if you don't go overboard, you are reducing your feed bill and adding flavor to your eggs.

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

You might want to up your protein a little if they are eating a lot of greens. The easiest way, at least for us, is to mix 25%of Purina Flockraiser into the Layena. We then supplement free-choice oyster shell so that the calcium balance doesn't get out of whack.

You can also give them hamburger, high-protein (read the bag) cat food or another high-protein treat to "fix" the protein and fat balance. If you've got the stomach to raise meal worms or to dig worms for them, they'd love it. You can also pull the bugs and beetles off the plants in your garden to feed to the chickens.

Keep giving them the greens. If you wanted chickens that never got any green food, you could buy the eggs at the store! Those greens and some bugs will make extremely delicious eggs.