How much food for a layer chicken and a bantam per day?

[indigirl]

Hiyas I have two chicken coops, I have 2 australorps amd 2 Isa browns in one and 4 bantams in the other. Thanks to sparrows and mice I'm going through 30kgs or 66 pounds of chicken feed a week! I cannot afford this. I plan to buy 2 treadle feeders but can't afford to right now.

So I'm thinking I should just put a days worth of feed out every morning and hopefully the chickens will eat their fill before the sparrows etc get it. I've read a laying chicken needs 120g of food per day but how much does a bantam need?

 

[CrazyTalk]

A bantam needs a little less than a layer...maybe 2/3?


You're probably losing more feed to the chickens just throwing it about than you are to the mice and sparrows. Chickens will waste food like you wouldn't believe with the standard bowls/feeders/

 

[Balloonjuice]

Indigirl,

My Red Stars will eat around 110-120 g of feed per day. They also free range, so if they get a little less than that they will make up for it. I've followed mine using an XL spreadsheet that my son made for me and the optimum feed seems to be 112 g per day -- I'm defining optimum as lowest cost per egg. Regarding your mouse problem, my chickens seem pretty good at keeping them out of the hen house.

I have no experience with bantams, sorry. However, I would agree that your best course of action is to put out only what they will eat in a day. I used to fill my 30 lb canister feeder full every couple of days. When I put just a little more than a day's worth of feed it it, the consumption seems to go down.

Question: are the mice getting into the feeder or do you have the feed stored in a critter proof container? I keep 100 lbs of feed at a time stored in a METAL trash bin near the hen house. No problems with mice, squirrels, opossums, or racoons; and we have them all on the property. I've made my hen house pretty much predator proof except for snakes. But I also know that mice can go pretty much wherever they want to.

HTH