My rooster is depressed, please help

[Romeo the Rooster]

Can I feed him tomatoes, rice, and scrambled eggs in the meantime until I can get him different food?

 

[Cecisflock]

Can I feed him tomatoes, rice, and scrambled eggs in the meantime until I can get him different food?

its not the best but it will do, do you have other veggies?

 

[JDChickChat]

Can I feed him tomatoes, rice, and scrambled eggs in the meantime until I can get him different food?

Rice is not too good, they have a hard time breaking it down. I would give him scrambled eggs, oats, some honey if you have it (always perks my birds up) and occasionally some tomatoes and other veggies.

 

[Cecisflock]

Rice is not too good, they have a hard time breaking it down. I would give him scrambled eggs, oats, some honey if you have it (always perks my birds up) and occasionally some tomatoes and other veggies.

yes! i would suggest this as well

 

[Romeo the Rooster]

Cooked oats?

 

[Cecisflock]

Y

Cooked oats?

yes, cooked!

 

[JDChickChat]

Cooked oats?

Yep!! They LOVE em. Like tiny little velociraptor scavengers.

 

[rayrose]

Roosters should not be fed layer feed. Too much calcium. Put
him on All Flock, and I'll bet you'll see a big improvement.

 

[NatJ]

And, I noticed you repeatedly mentioning checking to make sure his crop is emptying. What significance does that have?

In a healthy chicken, the crop is empty when they first wake up in the morning. Then they start eating, and the crop has some food in it all day long. Just before bedtime they usually stuff their crop as full as it can be, so they can be digesting that food during the night.

But if the crop is not empty in the morning, then it might have stuff just sitting there instead of getting digested. And if the crop is always partly full of the same stuff all the time (not getting digested), then the chicken will not feel hungry, so it will not eat, but it will be actually starving (losing weight, having no energy, feeling miserable) because it's not eating/digesting enough food.

For what to feed the chicken now: definitely leave the usual food available until you get some other chicken food. He may not eat much of it, but even a little would be better than none. I mean in addition to whatever else you may be offering him to eat.

You can try wetting some of your usual chicken food with water, because chickens often like it better that way. You could do that with layer feed, grower feed, chick starter--any kind of chicken feed, pelleted or crumbled, can have water added. (And if the rooster won't eat the wet food, just give it to your other chickens before it has a chance to go bad.)

Chickens seem to like wet chicken food just as much as they like oatmeal, and it's better balanced nutritionally, and it's faster to make

 

[Romeo the Rooster]

Roosters should not be fed layer feed.

I had no idea. All of my chickens eat the same food and the other roosters seem perfectly fine. Thanks