Need to vent...

[Teresaann24]

Was talking to a lady who is a friend of my aunt who owns lots of chickens. As we were talking I was refering to mine about wasting some of their food. She went on to tell me not to feed them till they cleaned up all their food. I was like WHAT????????? Not feed them for not cleaning all their food up?????????? She said yeah that she would go 2 days if need be and not feed her chickens because of the food that was left over. Now I have never heard this in my life I heard people filling trys full but checking to make sure they had plently of food left. Also I have heard some refreshing food everyday but never go 2 days without feeding them fresh food because they have left overs. I mean correct me if I am wrong but Mine waste alot but I still feed them everyday.

Anyone eles do this?

 

[shareneh]

Don't worry, do whatever works for you. I always add more feed even if they haven't finished eating all of it. chickens naturally scratch at their food so this is something we all deal with. I would just feed them half in the morning and the other half in the evening if you don't want them wasting.

 

[Enchanted Sunrise Farms]

i think even if they kick it out of the feeder onto the ground, they eventually eat it. That lady sounds like one of those people who made their children eat every single thing on their plate before they could leave the table - even cold overcooked brussel sprouts - eeeeech! (Wait, that's my childhood memory!) i never liked that as a kid and i won't torture my chickens with that old attitude.

My chickens have a full feeder and waterer all the time 24/7.

 

[dlhunicorn]

If the feed is not soiled with faeces and not older than a day old you can mix in fresh with it and enough cooked-in-water human oatmeal (add just enough to make it all clump together but not so much that it will "mat" ) ... I do this with my feed in the morning this time of year and not a bit is "wasted " at all...

 

[fowltemptress]

I've heard of that. Don't necessarily agree with it, but I've heard of it. I don't trust myself to know exactly when the chickens are totally out of food, so I just never let it get to that point. I had a harsh lesson as a child . . . I thought my gerbils had food because I could see the food scattered in their bedding, but it must have just been the waste, because one died and the other ate the dead one's tail. That was absolutely traumatizing, so now I always put my animal's needs ahead of my own, even if that means I have higher feed bills because of waste.

 

[dlhunicorn]

so do I which is why I always have feed left over at the end of the day (I top up the whatever they dont eat in the morning and what is left from the evening before I mix in with their fresh morning feed)

 

[jvls1942]

Hmmm, how to start.....

first of all, chickens are messy eaters...never take one to a fine restaurant..

The aunt's friend has her way..
I have done the same, to a degree.. I hold off for a few hours, and yes, they will clean up what is on the ground, and no it doesn't hurt them.. freerange chickens will go on th cow manure pile and pick out the undigested corn etc..
nothing wrong with that..

If you want less waste, measure out an amount of feed.
feed the chickens and wait 20 minutes.. measure what is left.
subtract that from what you fed and feed the diference in the future.. this only works if you do it every few weeks, because you are always adding chickens, or deleting chickens, or they are growing etc..

I am lazy and I just keep feed in front of them at all times .
on my hopper feeder, i make the outlet slot as small as I can.
that forces the chicken to have to peck at it to get it.. they have all day with nothing else to do,

.jiminwisc..........

 

[rizq]

My chickens always have feed. I do, however let them clean up their mess before I refill their feeders all the way, or they won't do. If there is food in the feeders, mine won't eat it off the ground, they just scratch out more. If the feeders are close to empty (I don't think they've ever gotten completely empty) they happily clean up their mess.

I don't think it is mean. Chickens eat a lot of things off the ground and it doesn't hurt them a bit. It isn't as though they are going without feed. I just can't see leaving half the feed to go to waste because the boogers just want to scratch more out of the feeder.

Again, this doesn't mean the chickens go without feed. They have never gone without food. They have food, it just might not be in their feeder.

 

[al6517]

Mine also used to waste feed, then I made some changes to the feeder and no more billing out or waste. Then they began to eat what I thought was way to much feed in a day for the amount of chickens that I have 65. So what I did was measured out what I thought was a good amount of feed for each bird per day, then multiplied that by 65. I then fed them and watched for a while, then at the end of the day I checked the feeders. whatever was left was what they would eat in a day, guess what my feed bill is now 1/2 what it was. I found that alot of these birds will eat even when not hungry, and to me that is wasteful. good luck with this dilema.

 

[kinnip]

Mine really don't waste much at all. I have three feeders that stay full all the time, unless it's time for disinfecting. I collect them every night and put them out in a different spot in the morning. The birds eat out of the feeders, but are intrigued by the little ring of food left on the ground from the previous day. They always clean it up.