Hens' keel feels skinny even with free choice feed and free ranging

[topochico225]

Hey y'all!

I have 3 year-old hens, two Red Stars and a RIR. They are fed Nature's Best Organic Layer Pellets, very occasional frozen fruits/veggies because of the summer heat, and crushed eggshells. They are allowed to free range from around 7am-9pm. They've been dewormed recently, don't exactly remember when. They've always been this skinny. No feather picking or other signs of malnutrition.

No matter how much feed I offer them, they remain skinny little things. The RIR and one of the Red Stars don't look very skinny, but their keels are pretty prominent. The other Red Star looks skinny and has the same prominent keel. I really, really hesitate to feed them any kind of treats like mealworms or BOSS, because I lost my other RIR lady to Fatty Liver Hemorrhagic Syndrome back in January from an excess of mealworms. I actually don't even buy mealworms anymore; the girls get wet feed mash or blueberries as an occasional treat. I have some Poultry Booster pellet vitamin supplement that I was going to mix in to their feed when I have to buy a new bag.

Is this anything to worry about?

 

[sourland]

For high production birds skinny is far better than fat. It sounds like your birds are doing fine.

 

[GC-Raptor]

It sounds like your birds are doing fine.

Agree, My first Flock of Golden Comets (Red Sex-links), alias Red Stars. All 5 were skinny and gave me 32/35 eggs weekly.
I currently have 4 ISA Browns (Red Sex-links) and they are even skinnier than the Golden Comets and give me 27/28 eggs weekly.
Now my second Flock of 7 Barred Rocks were heavy, a lot of meat on them and on average 43 eggs weekly.
All egg counts are the first year of laying.
All chickens were fed 18% Protein feed the first year. I've never bought meal worms nor bought fruit or berries for them.
I do give Scratch Grains as a treat.
I only Free Range an hour daily, weather permitting. GC

 

[K0k0shka]

Some people swear by the keel bone as a means to assess weight in chickens, but I'm not convinced. Chickens carry fat mostly in the lower abdomen, the round "butt" below the vent where the fluffy feathers are. The keel bone has muscle attached to it (the "breast") and not a lot of fat. So I don't see how you can judge fatness by the prominence of the keel bone. Fat would go on the butt first, so it would be quite some time and a lot of extra pounds until the chicken starts to bulk up in other places, like around the keel. If you process an overweight chicken, you'll see the ball of yellow fat sitting on its own on the butt, and not much fat mixed in with the meat, unlike with mammals, where there's more marbling of the muscle with fat. I processed a very fat cockerel last summer that had a fist-size ball of fat in his butt, but his keel bone was still sticking out. Maybe because he was still young and not done growing, but still, the keel wouldn't have been a good way to tell if he was overweight. I currently have some mature hens that I suspect are a bit heavier than they should be - they feel very heavy when I pick them up - but their keels are still sticking out very prominently.

Another factor that may play into this as well is how fit the bird is and how much flying and jumping it does on a daily basis, since the keel is where the flight muscles attach to the chest. My fat birds are lazy, heavy English Orpingtons who really don't like jumping or flying, so they probably don't have a lot of muscle on their keel, and whatever they do have is "out of shape" and soft. But a chicken that uses its wings more probably has more, and firmer, muscle there so the space around the keel would feel fuller, even if the bird is not actually overweight.