New chicks - what and when can I start feeding them treats?

[geareduplyn]

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Think about what you said for a minute. If thats all the convincing it takes for you be convinced of something I have a bunch of stuff for sale in which you might be interested. Even a non-scientific test should have had a control group.
Chickens have been free ranging in home orchards and eating windfalls since chickens were introduced to this country. I've been a round a while and had thought I had heard just about every tale concerning chickens but that was new one.

 

[natalie1136]

We give ours everything including fruit. Our lay just fine. I actually just gave them watermelon this weekend and we still have eggs.
]Natalie

 

[sugarbush]

I had a control. I know that 75%-100% of my birds lay every day like clockwork. After feeding strawberries I got 25% lay the next day and 0% the day after that for a few days, then slow progression back to normal 75-100% lay pattern.

I only have 4 birds so 6 strawberries is a lot for them. You could easily divide a larger flock into a control and test group. Keep track of average lay for a week or two and then feed the test group fruit and compare the two groups for a week.

If your flock is larger and you feed fruit all the time you would not even notice if production dropped off because you have nothing to compare it to....May be your chickens that lay great on fruit would lay super great without it

 

[geareduplyn]

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I've never expected more than one egg a day.

 

[sugarbush]

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Hows many birds do you have? No chicken lays every day, the average is 260 days a year so that leave 105 days a year that they are not laying.

 

[Foxhound lady]

We got 4eggs out of 5 birds today (normal BTW) who were feed raspberries, blueberries, and stawberry tops yesterday.

They adore grapes, tomatoes (will pick them off of the plants) cumquts, and persimmons (should have seen them in hanging out under the persimmon tree after the hurricane it was like they'd died and gone to chicken heaven)

 

[geareduplyn]

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Hows many birds do you have? No chicken lays every day, the average is 260 days a year so that leave 105 days a year that they are not laying.

I'm quite aware that they do not lay every day. I've been doing this for along time so I pretty much have it down. As to numbers. I spent almost the whole month of Janurary away from home. My son in law took care of the birds. This is something he does not enjoy in the slightest. It seemed to be taking a lot of time so he decided to count the birds. He stopped at 700

 

[orcasislandchickens]

Mine eat pretty much everything including lots of fruit . I'm sure one of my hens favourite memories is finding my strawberry patch last fall. They dug under a corner of the fence, and it was a couple of days before I figured out what they had done. By then they had not only eaten all the berries, but pretty much all of the plants as well. They still eye that corner of the yard from their new fully enclosed run area. They are fine and still laying happily although I thought a lot about chicken soup for awhile. I love stawberries. If you give them access to rotten stuff they might get botulism. That could slow the laying down. Dead hens don't lay well.

 

[sugarbush]

Foxhound:
When you say tops you mean the greens right? Give them some whole strawberries and see if it impacts laying.

Gear:
That was my point exactly....with that many birds a bucket of fruit is nothing. If 35 birds ate the fruit and stopped laying that would only be 5% and you wouldn't even notice the difference from a result of feeding fruit or some chickens just not laying that day.

It would be interesting to see results if several people split their flocks into groups and actually tested the impact, if any, fruit has on egg production....Any volunteers?

 

[bigzio]

sugarbush, please keep in mind that the flock really prefers a free range diet...that's why we do it (free range)... it's the ability of the flock to pick and choose all day long, stopping for a while and consuming something they see fit to eat, or something that they really like.

One can study all they like....allow the flock to decide without any force feeding, the way God ment life to be....and I assure you your flock will lay eggs like never before....even with alot or some fruit in the diet!

~ bigzio