I think their food intake dropped when they started hanging out mostly inside the coop. Although my girls will continue grazing in a heavy rain, they find snow to be just so "icky". They don't want to walk on it, but they'll eat it. I did shovel out areas for them, and put down straw for them to walk on. Despite all this, they've spent much of the last month inside their little coop or inside their little dog house. In the dark. Their food and water are under the coop. I've been putting out scratch and alfalfa hay for them to eat, and putting some of it in the dog house, but I want them outside in the sun. I have given them cooked apples, oatmeal, corn meal, quinoa, squash...trying to get them to eat more. I notice they're really not eating their layer pellets much. I hardly need to refill that container. They stopped laying mid-December when the days dropped below 9 hours and 10 minutes of daylight. I was hoping that sometime this week, when we cross up into that amount of daylight again, they would start to lay again, but now with the molt...I just don't want them to freeze. I can get eggs from my neighbors until my girls are strong enought to expend energy into eggs.
I will try the beef canned cat food. I have snap-type mouse traps in my basement, and was thinking of seeing what they'd do with fresh mouse. Has anyone done this? I've heard of other's chickens killing and eating mice. That's good protein. Our mice are fat on our birdseed!! Not to mention the squirrels, but don't get me started on them... They eat my chicken's food, too!! Might as well recycle the squirrels into chicken food, right?
