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What to feed really does vary from one situation to the next. The nutrient requirements of a bird vary depending on it's stage of life and Opa is right that layer feed is formulated for chickens who are in the stage of life where they are laying. But a few things are often overlooked when people decide what they should be using. One of those things is the breed of the chicken -- a chicken who is laying an egg a day has different requirements than a chicken who is laying 2 eggs a week. Another oft overlooked factor is the rest of the chicken's diet -- commercial, bagged feeds are formulated for and intended to be used as a complete feed. IOW, it's formulated to be fed exclusively, not along side grass or hay or bugs or scratch or anything else. And the final thing that is often overlooked, and probably even more often just not at all understood is that the bagged feeds you find are based on the
bare minimum of known nutritional needs for chickens of a certain stage of life. They assume a perfectly balanced amino acid profile, for instance, when computing crude protein.
So, as you can see, there are a lot of factors to consider here. Anytime someone is going to be feeding low protein snacks and treats I highly recommend sticking with a feed higher in crude protein (and with an appropriate amino acid profile) because you have to remember that when you add in oatmeal or melon you're changing the composition of their diet. The requirements you read about are
overall. The overall diet should be 16% CP. Well, if you are feeding 16% CP layer feed and then you're giving them another 10% of their daily diet in snacks and treats, you're lowering the CP. (And compromising the amino acid profile -- which is more notable but I don't have a lot of time in between football games here so we'll come back to it, if you'd like. If not, you can just take my word for it.
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Unfortunately, when you do that you're tampering a bit with the vitamin and mineral profile since growing birds require different amounts of vitamins and minerals than laying birds (which is basically your two choices when you're working with commercial feed -- grower or layer). Fortunately, the main difference between the two is the calcium and that's easy enough to supplement. Oyster Shell works wonderfully. The other differences aren't usually so notable to be of great concern.
So, in a nutshell, based only on the information you've offered -- I would recommend you continue on with what you're feeding. To put that into perspective I'm assuming here that you are feeding treats regularly, but not in amounts that significantly reduce the amount of feed they're consuming. I'm assuming your free-range area is moderately to significantly limited as to diversity and overall size -- your basic backyard, non-rural, no fields, no other stock, etc. And I'm also assuming that you have hatchery stock birds of a fairly common laying breed.
IF one or more of those assumptions are wrong I might change my recommendation -- if you've got birds of a line and/or breed that do not lay often, if you have vast and highly diversified free-ranging available to them or if you are feeding treats only very rarely their requirements may be lower, or in the case of the free-ranging they may be able to be reasonably expected to derive a greater amount of their nutrients from the land, less from what you provide.
Hopefully this helps answer your questions.
ladychicken&Ducklover wrote:
