Mad Chickens

[mjdtexan]

My girls are mad at me. I switched them yesterday from starter/grower to laying pellets. They aint likeing the the pellets. They actually holler at me when I go to check for eggs. I will be glad when they all start laying

Question- am I hurting the ones that are not ready to lay yet by feeding them the laying pellets? Its kinda hard to seperate the girls for feeding.

 

[Judy]

Mine did that too. I bought a smaller bag of layer crumbles, mixed maybe 25% pellets with 75% crumbles and maybe half filled the feeder, then gradually increased the pellets. Worked fine. It was worth the trouble -- so much less waste with the pellets.

Now if I could just get them to eat BOSS.....

 

[Judy]

Oops, missed the last question.

What I have read here is that you can feed grower to laying hens if you also offer oyster shell. Those who need the oyster shell will eat it. Might depend on how far apart in age they are. If they are much the same and the rest are due to start laying, I'd personally go with layer for all. But I can't even find oyster shell around here.

 

[mjdtexan]

Quote:
Thanks, they are all eggzactly the same age. I got them from Ideal.

They are still ticked off, they get real noisy when I get close to the coop. I am just going to wait them out. They ate some of the pellets but not all yesterday. I messed up and gave them their nightly scratch treat before I remembered that I was trying to force them to eat their pellets. Kinda reminds me of trying to make the kids eat their spinach.

 

[coffeelady3]

Just like with kids...they may not like it at first, but eventually they're gonna get hungry!

 

[gritsar]

Quote:
Yep, and I've found out something else that goes along with that. I've read where people say that their bantams can't eat layer pellets (too big).
For the last couple of weeks I've had a problem with tiny little finches getting in my coop. They're eating the hen's layer pellets. Now it seems to me that if a finch can manage to eat layer pellets, then a bantam chicken.....

 

[JennsPeeps]

I switched my girls to layer food at about age 6 months b/c I was out of food and didn't want to keep them on starter. They started laying about month later & none suffered for it.

 

[rays123]

just take all food away from them for about half a day and then put it back in there. itll be gone before you know it

 

[mjdtexan]

They got over it in fairly quick order. Probably dont even remember starter/grower by now.

 

[WriterofWords]

LOL mine didn't like the switch but Pudster the Cat paid the price, they went after his food instead!