It is ABSOLUTELY FALSE that rice will hurt yer chickens.

[ruth]

In addition to free ranging our farm and getting layer feed - I also feed my chickens and ducks, young and adults, everything left over from our meals - beans, rice, pastas, salads, breads - you name it - other than any leftover meat which the dogs get - the chickens get everything else. I also dice up any sandwich meats that look like they're not getting used before they go bad and buy shredded cheese (their personal favorite) - plus I buy and feed them scratch&grains, black oil sunflower seeds, and a game bird feed.

My mom was visiting recently. She was raised poor on a farm in the country. When she saw all 5 bags of expensive feeds and me mixing them up a scoop of each in a big bucket to go feed them - she laughed and said "We never bought feed to give our chickens - they ate what they could find."

Chickens are omnivores and foragers. They will eat anything that doesn't eat them. Not only will they eat everything - they need that balance to stay active and healthy. I'll bet my chickens log many miles a day running around here scratching and foraging. Not a one of them has ever said "But the books say we only need 4 square feet of space and strictly layer feed".

 

[prariechiken]

Freerange is the way to go if you can. You throw laying pellets down for our flock and they will give ya one of these...

 

[Davaroo]

Here's a few thoughts on the matter of free-ranging, from good old Bob Plamondon. See what you think...

"1. Do I have to feed free-range chickens, or can they find their own feed?

Chickens can find their own feed, but each chicken needs a lot of room if this is going to work. Also, chickens that live entirely by foraging have to have their population adjusted regularly to match the feed supply.

For example, a farmer of 100 years ago might have kept a dozen hens and a rooster through the winter, and allowed the hens to hatch a brood of chicks each in the spring, giving, say, 72 chicks plus the original 13 chickens, or 85 birds total. The old rooster would be sold after the chicks had hatched.

The old hens and most of the young chickens would be sold in the fall, and one cockerel and twelve pullets would be kept through the lean months. By having 85 chickens during the fat months and only 13 during the winter, the amount of supplemental feed needed by the chickens would be minimized. A flock of 13 chickens might survive all winter on the grain spilled by a cow and a team of draft horses, plus some hay and whatever else they could find. This winter diet would be nutritionally poor (both vitamin- and protein-deficient) and the hens would lay few eggs, but they'd recover in early spring and the cycle would repeat.

Nutritional deficiencies increase with the number of chickens. I've heard estimates that you can support 1-2 hens per acre with no supplemental feeding, though probably not during the winter.
As you add chickens to the farm, they first exhaust the supply of high-calorie feeds such as seeds, then the supply of high-protein feeds such as bugs, worms, and high-protein forage. Finally, they use up the supply of high-vitamin feeds such as grass. Modern poultrykeeping revolves around supplying the nutrients the chickens can't find for themselves.

In the good old days, when people didn't feed their hens at all, much of the hen's diet was provided by sheer sloppiness. People threw their garbage out into the street or the barnyard. The cows and horses spilled grain. Manure was everywhere and was full of yummy maggots. Even with all the natural bounty provided by Stone Age sanitation, the number of hens that could be supported without supplemental feeding was very limited. Flocks of over fifty hens were unusual before chicken feed was invented.

In practice, though, it always pays to provide a complete diet, compared to feeding nothing at all or supplying nothing but grain.
The increased production always pays for the increased feed bill.

2. What Should I Feed My Chickens?
Chicken feed. People like to complicate the feeding issue beyond all reason. Buy a sack of feed that's labeled for the kind of chickens you have (chick starter, broiler starter, layer feed, etc.). This will be a balanced feed, and the chickens will do fine if you don't feed them anything else.

For my hens, I use the three-bin feeder system. I have one feeder full of 19% protein "All Purpose Poultry" pellets, one feeder full of whatever whole grain is cheapest (usually corn), and one feeder full of oystershell. You can replace the "All Purpose Poultry" ration with a high-protein layer ration if that suits you.

The reason I do this is that chickens have a definite calcium appetite (oystershells), energy appetite (grain), and protein appetite (high-protein poultry ration). A hen who lays an egg a day will eat far more calcium than one who lays an egg a week. If the only source of calcium is the chicken feed, she will eat feed just for its calcium, and get fat. With calcium offered on the side in the form of oystershell, she can eat the calcium she wants without unwanted calories. Similarly, a hen who is not laying at the moment wants little calcium or protein, and will eat mostly grain, which is cheaper than the other ingredients.

Furthermore, forage is high in protein. When the pasture plants are bright green and succulent, or when there are lots of slow-moving bugs and worms around, the hens get a lot of protein by foraging, turn up their noses at the pellets, and eat mostly forage and whole grain. When the pasture plants turn brown and the insects move too fast, they fall back on the pellets.

For pullet chicks, I feed chick starter for several weeks, then offer grain in a separate feeder. Once the chicks go onto pasture, they get the same ration as the hens.

Broiler chicks start with a 22% broiler starter, graduate to a 20% broiler grower ration, which is later supplemented with whole grains.

Turkeys are similar to broilers: start with a 28% turkey starter, graduate to a 20% broiler grower, which is later supplemented with whole grains.

All my poultry also have access to range."

Bob doesn't hide, he is easy to find at plamondon.com. Check him out.

 

[seedcorn]

rice killing chickens probably started because rice was reported to kill small birds that ate it at weddings? How corn meal kills ants......

Not sure if true or not as I've never visited wedding sites to count sick or dieing birds......I'm sure some grad student has had this privilege tho......

 

[Davaroo]

The whole rice-killing-birds thing was debunked, Another urban myth welcomed by our brains' "lurid receptors."

 

[prariechiken]

Quote:
I would save the whole corn for the cold months. The whole corn gives off lots of "heat", while the bird processes it. It is great to use to help a hen go broody and great for giving the birds some "warmth" in the cold months. Best thing to do would be find a properly balanced diet suited to your birds and stick with it. Too drastic a feed change can put stress on the fowl, possibly pushing them to molt...

 

[Davaroo]

You gotta read the whole thing. Bob is really allowing the bird to self adjust its diet, depending on the season and range.

 

[ruth]

Very interesting article. All I can say is that my hens have never ceased laying in the one year I've had them - always an egg a day - also never moulted - and never sick. I believe free ranging is beneficial in more ways than just what goes into their bodies, I believe the fresh air and sunshine and ability to roam freely and scratch and forage all day does something to their mentality/personality whatever you want to call it because I can throw in new baby chicks, dropped off chickens, new ducks and everyone gets along great. Everyone is in coop at night and usually hang out there a lot during day now that it is so hot and humid. I've never seen a single fight or had a bird that another picked on or injured. When cooking rice I always make extra to feed the girls - it's their personal favorite. However they eat like well fed pigs all day long and reward me with so many eggs that once a week I boil up a couple of dozen eggs and mash them up shell and all and feed them back to them.

By the way, in one year I've never fed them "grit" or oyster shell and the egg shells are so hard you have to bang them twice on side of skillet to get them to crack. The yolks are not yellow but dark orange.

 

[digitS']

Quote:
I hope it is okay to continue this drift off the rice issue . . .

Researchers studying Red Junglefowl in India found that flocks of about 5 birds range over about 12.5 acres of land. Seems to jive with what Plamondon is saying.

Of course there's more to population density than just available food but it is a critically important factor. And, one environment differs from another in the occurrence of natural food. However, I think folks are very, very inclined to over-estimate the carrying capacity of their backyard or horse paddock or whatever. There are many things that a chicken can eat but it must have that balance to stay healthy and productive.

I know that in Southeast Asia, chickens will range as far as one-half mile. India and Southeast Asia are the natural habitat of chickens. Many places where we are expecting them to free range is far from a natural home for these birds. More obvious is what the overgrazing of horses will do to a few acres. Gotta wonder what some horse owners are thinking.

Steve

 

[Crest Acres Girl]

My father told me when he was little, after the chicken lays the egg the maid would grab a handful of uncooked rice or mung beans and scatter it on the floor for the chickens.

They go crazy over them!!