Layer feed for the young ones?

[hurricanearran]

What are the dangers/concerns of feeding layer feed to chickens who are not yet laying?

Because of the extremely remote location in which we live, we have to ship our feed in by the pallet and it's very costly to do this. We have over a ton of laying feed but hatched out a couple dozen in January and have run out of grower feed.

These chicks are only just 3 months old and we've been feeding them layer feed for about a month. I realize this isn't ideal but it's unrealistic to ship more feed up at this time when we already have so much feed on hand.

 

[BarefootMom]

That is what we do after the chick starter go straight to egg crumbles. We are only using the grower/flock raiser for our meaties.

 

[schellie69]

Its the extra calcium that is bad for chickens not yet laying they don't need it. I am not sure what it will do just what I read was it had to much calcium I do feed either flock raiser or game bird feed, and offer free choice egg shells since I have a mixed flock and they free range helps with the protein levels. Hopefully someone who knows more about feed will post.

 

[hurricanearran]

Quote:
This is what I keep reading, but then no further information on why this is or what may happen as a result.

I've always been a person who finds warning labels annoying. Don't just tell "DO NOT...", tell me "DO NOT BECAUSE..."!

 

[hurricanearran]

For what it's worth, I found some good answers in this article.

http://www.poultrypro.com/poultry-a...rograms-for-eggstrain-pullets-up-to-maturity/

 

[dsqard]

I have read on here that the extra calcuim can damage the kideys of pullets that are not laying yet. I don't feed layer food to my flock. I feed flock raiser and just give them oyster shell free choice. That way with mixed age flocks you don't have to worry about the youngsters getting too much calcium. It works great and my egg shells are nice and hard.

 

[hurricanearran]

Thanks for the info!
Guess we'll just have to see what happens with this crew because it's all we have at the moment. In the future, I think I'll go with the suggestion of feeding growing feed with calcium (oyster shell) supplement as we're always going to have mixed flocks.