I bought some pellet layer feed and got a question before I give

[cupman]

I bought some pellet layena feed, comes in a pink bag. I was standing there looking at the bags for a couple minutes when some guy grabbed pellets, so I asked him why and he said it helps reduce in wasted food. I normally have used the crumble.

1) Is this true? I bought pellet because my darn chickens have been kicking their feed out of the feeder lately and it's driving me nuts.

2) Is there anything I should know/do before transitioning my chickens from crumble to layer or will they be cool?

Thanks in advance. Dinner time.

 

[AccentOnHakes]

Yes, it does help a lot with waste.

Some chickens do better with transition than others, mine were wary at first but eating it by the end of the day.

 

[LiLRedCV]

Pellets are supposed to cut down on wasted feed, but if you've been feeding your gals crumbles they may balk (no pun intended) at the change at first. There are some ways to prevent waste even with crumbles - depending on your feeders - and I'm absolutely positive you'll get some people posting some pics to show you.

We don't have one of those feeders (YET), but we do use pellets and have less waste vs the crumbles we used to use when they were baby chicks. We have plans to build feeders utilizing one of these very methods previously posted, but it will probably have to wait until next spring or early summer. Not much room to work indoors to make them and our usual rainy winter weather has already made it's appearance. (sigh)

 

[Patricia Jane]

I tried to go with the pellets but no matter what I did they refused to eat it. I began by mixing alittle pellets with their crumbles, then added more pellets and less crumbles till I had just pellets. There they sat. They would eat all the crumbles and leave the pellets. Needless to say I went back to crumbles. I changed the feeder and it worked great. Hope this helps. You may not have any problem changing, mine are pretty fussy.

 

[Lothiriel]

In my experience, pellets have cut waaay down on the waste. Your girls may wonder what the heck you've done to their food, but before long they'll accept it readily.

It makes them eat slower too -- I quit using crumbles when 2 of my girls choked on it and died (they were big food fans... loved to eat, and with the crumbles they ate too fast).

 

[Davian]

Mine looked at me with this angry look when I switched them over to pellets...they really didn't like them at first and grew to "tolerate" them at least. I've since switched them back to layer crumbles to supplement their free ranging. At this point in the year, I'm mixing in scratch though as its getting colder.

 

[ChickieBooBoo]

Pellets reduce waste, but the chickens don't like it as much... particularly at first. However, they won't starve themselves so even if you don't see them eating it at first, they will eventually.

 

[WalkerH]

I never had these issues with transfer. Well with my big flock. With the chickens in quaratine I have a suspicion they were eating mash and refused to the eat the pellets. I just mixed water and then less and less over time, worked for me. But that was only two chickens. And for lowering waste I would think so. I went from buying a 50 lbs bag of crumble for two weeks down to 50 lbs bag of pellet every 3 weeks.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Whatever I feed, they'll eat, or go hungry. Going hungry isn't in a chicken's nature, so they eat it.

What I do not like to do is mix. This encourages picking out the "good" stuff (determined by the chicken) and leads to beaking out the "bad" stuff (also determined by the chicken). Now, that is wasteful!! Chickens are incredibly easy creatures to spoil.

Pellets do a good job guarding against wastefulness. If only they didn't cost so much.

 

[kuntrygirl]

I prefer the pellets. Less waste and it lasts longer in the feeders than crumble does.