money's tight... out of feed

[chuckzoo]

Quote:
Where are you? I only have two laying hens so normally give away half of my 50lb bag to anyone that wants it so that I can feed fresh feed otherwise it takes too long for them to finish before it goes stale.

 

[Debob]

My rule of thumb- If I can eat it so can the girls. Been throwing mine more scraps lately, it's treat to them.Lots of garden stuff lately.

 

[Chickhick]

I've heard people say that they feed dogfood or catfood to their chickens.

Anybody else creeped out by that? I mean, come on, most dog and cat food is made with CHICKEN meat. I'm not going to turn my chickens into cannibals. EWWW! I guess I might do it if the protein was from another source, but feeding chicken meat to chickens just seems gross. Mad cow all over again.

 

[HeidiG]

I imagine it depends on how many chickens you have, how much land they have to free range on, and how much forage is available to them.

If they're hungry they'll venture out and start looking.

Mine barely eat any feed right now. They're outside from around 7 a.m until dusk, and they have about 1/2 an acre of grass, clover, etc., plus the compost pile that they like to scratch around in. I give them treats from the kitchen - but they're picky. They won't eat a lot of the things I've tried to give them. Darn spoiled chickens!

 

[macmama]

Mine are just fine without feed on my 1/4 acre lot. I had layer pellet out but they never touched it.

They much prefer grass, bugs, etc. I did notice that before I started giving flock raiser the chicks were growing more slowly and I was getting less eggs... probably more equivalent to how things went "in the good old days." I choose to feed flock raiser now because of the better laying, but they definitely don't NEED it. They'll be fine with scraps for a month. I don't think chickens are as high-maintenance as we make them out to be.

 

[EweSheep]

Quote:
Nothing wrong with that! No, they will not turn into cannibals LOL!

Chicken noodles, pieces of ground turkey, yep, they love them all! It has to be ground up because big chunks, they can choke on them.

We also feed back the extra or old cooked eggs back to them...great source of protein!

 

[Camelot Farms]

Quote:
So you dont want to see a pic of my girls cleaning up after a bucket of KFC?

 

[Organics North]

I may personally be morally apposed to my chickens eating chicken, but the chickens sure are not.........

As close as I get is giving them a turkey carcass to clean up. I do not give mine chicken. Know baby mice, fish guts yep.. Chickens love it.

(We humans at our house are semi vegetarian, as for meat we eat fish, beef or venison mostly.)

ON

 

[zazouse]

Quote:
So you dont want to see a pic of my girls cleaning up after a bucket of KFC?

You sure would not like it at my farm i feed my surplus roos and eggs to my hard working dogs and chickens.

 

[SB Austex]

There are also online 'freecycle' groups around the country. I'm on the one here in Austin and there is tons of activity. People that hate to see things thrown out that others can use as well as people that need them post on a site - sorta like craigslist but everything must be free.