Hello. New to raising chickens and need help!

[DoloresRun]

Ok did a little research on this wonderful forum and found out that I can feed the chickens cat food?

Who would have thunk it

I tried a small container today that I happened to have on hand from my finicky cat and low and behold...... success. I am now going to ask my neighbour (who incidently loves our eggs) to throw in meat scraps with the veggie scraps that she has been feeding our chooks! I really never knew that chickens eat meat and need it like they do! I thought that I could raise them without the meat but everything is telling me to feed it to them so they will get it. I don't want them to get sick so that is what they will get!!!!

Happy chickens.... Happy mom

 

[rolffamily]

3 out of 5 of my chickens laid a no-shell egg for their first attempt. The membrane surrounding it was as tough as rubber, however, so I was not concerned about their nutrition. I feed Purina Layena with vegatable peels and BOSS as treats.

 

[Chicken.Lytle]

Chickens are enthusiastic meat eaters . I feed mine cooked leftovers, never raw.

 

[Sueg4332]

OK what is a seed diet What kind of seeds

 

[DoloresRun]

Okie dokie I just went out to the shed to get information off of the bag of poultry feed I use.

It is a free range mix which includes added vitamins and minerals and grit. It also includes Peas, Lupins, Wheat, Maize, Lucerne Chaff, Sorghum and Black Sunflower.

I suppose I made a mistake by calling it a seed mix as it seems to only contain sunflower as a seed.

I have started to add some cat food to their diet (fish based but it also has chicken meal) and we have also started giving them more in the way of kitchen scraps. I was a friends house and she has 4 Isa Browns and they look really terrible compared to mine. Our chickens are fat and healthy looking compared to hers which are quite scrawny. They are about the same age so I am not sure why hers are so sad looking other than to say all she feeds them are pellets and a little scratch every day. We have from day one given lots of veggie scraps and this poulty mix so I am not sure if that is why.

Today we got three nice looking eggs and yesterday as well with no weird eggs happening so I suppose it was a one off thing.

Another question though... Has anyone ever had chickens that are so silly that they can't figure out where their coop is? We had to segregate the Isa Browns because they were being too violent towards the others and neither of them seemed to know where to sleep! I had to catch them and place them into the coop so they would know. One of them has figured it out now so we will see if the other will as well but I will tell you, these girls must be the blondes of my flock

Happy Egg collecting to you all

Dolores