- Oct 13, 2008
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Fred's Hens :
Yes, a large fowl bird, that is also laying, can easily consume 1/3 pound of feed per day, especially in cold weather when calories are needed for body heat production.
Sky, the Chicken Man, you infer that chickens are expensive to feed and potentially a pricey hobby. You are correct. Of course, the answer cannot be to under-feed them.
It seems better for most folks to again investigate the availability of feed from a local mill. To my mind, that is where one's efforts should be proactive. A bag of Purina, at a TSC type, rural retail store here is $17 a bag. A local Hubbard feed mill here sells a bag of their own ground layer feed for $10.
No such thing as a local mill where I am, for better or worse. Most of us with chickens are either rapidly going broke (haha), or figuring out how to partially substitute with garden/kitchen by-products, cultured larvae, and/or other local feed sources like fish scraps from fishmarkets or restaurants. This is not the same as underfeeding, it's about being creative and using local resources. Chickens have the ability to be very adaptive in their dietary habits--this is something we can make good use of, as people throughout the ages have done. I know one farm that feeds a laying flock with a ration made from fish scraps, larvae, greens and other vegetables, fruit scraps, out-of-code bread from a bakery, and a small amount of layer pellets. Others use the Korean Natural Farming method or something similar. I'm currently working on weaning mine onto something like it myself.
To me that is where the future lies: finding local sources (ideally on-property) and making use of wholesome by-products that would otherwise go to waste, combined with forage whenever possible. And an equally key thing is going to be breeding and adapting local chickens to suit this model (eg, breeding in good foraging ability for free-roaming set-ups, grooming the chicks for a high-fiber diet, making use of existing landraces where suitable, etc). Obviously it makes no sense to grow or buy something expensive, shipped across the country, to feed the animals--that's an inefficient and costly (to the budget and the environment) way to produce food. And as cheap liquid fuel declines, we are going to be increasing driven to confront this issue, methinks. However, I believe that will be a good thing in the long run, as we gain a more realistic idea of what works and what doesn't, without the distortion of value created by the Age of Cheap Oil.
Yes, a large fowl bird, that is also laying, can easily consume 1/3 pound of feed per day, especially in cold weather when calories are needed for body heat production.
Sky, the Chicken Man, you infer that chickens are expensive to feed and potentially a pricey hobby. You are correct. Of course, the answer cannot be to under-feed them.
It seems better for most folks to again investigate the availability of feed from a local mill. To my mind, that is where one's efforts should be proactive. A bag of Purina, at a TSC type, rural retail store here is $17 a bag. A local Hubbard feed mill here sells a bag of their own ground layer feed for $10.
No such thing as a local mill where I am, for better or worse. Most of us with chickens are either rapidly going broke (haha), or figuring out how to partially substitute with garden/kitchen by-products, cultured larvae, and/or other local feed sources like fish scraps from fishmarkets or restaurants. This is not the same as underfeeding, it's about being creative and using local resources. Chickens have the ability to be very adaptive in their dietary habits--this is something we can make good use of, as people throughout the ages have done. I know one farm that feeds a laying flock with a ration made from fish scraps, larvae, greens and other vegetables, fruit scraps, out-of-code bread from a bakery, and a small amount of layer pellets. Others use the Korean Natural Farming method or something similar. I'm currently working on weaning mine onto something like it myself.
To me that is where the future lies: finding local sources (ideally on-property) and making use of wholesome by-products that would otherwise go to waste, combined with forage whenever possible. And an equally key thing is going to be breeding and adapting local chickens to suit this model (eg, breeding in good foraging ability for free-roaming set-ups, grooming the chicks for a high-fiber diet, making use of existing landraces where suitable, etc). Obviously it makes no sense to grow or buy something expensive, shipped across the country, to feed the animals--that's an inefficient and costly (to the budget and the environment) way to produce food. And as cheap liquid fuel declines, we are going to be increasing driven to confront this issue, methinks. However, I believe that will be a good thing in the long run, as we gain a more realistic idea of what works and what doesn't, without the distortion of value created by the Age of Cheap Oil.
