no chicken pellet diet?

[mistari]

What can I feed my chicken without having to buy chicken food? I have been giving her corn but she's getting too fat. Something I can buy in a bag maybe usually I pick up a bag of cracked corn and I give her indian corn that i grew and pumpkin seeds. She is a really picky eater.

 

[ArizonaNessa]

Why do you not want to buy chicken feed? Cracked corn or scratch grains does not have enough protein to use it for more than just a treat.

 

[mistari]

I give her all kinds of vegetables too. She is picky though.

 

[chicks4kids]

Quote:
Maybe she is lacking and would chow down on some chicken feed. Is she your only chicken? Is there a reason why you don't want her to be eating "chicken" food???

 

[davidb]

Back in years gone by , they ate shelled corn, table scrapes, and what ever they could find scratching ,

 

[ckbythesea]

I was amazed how little a bag of chicken feed (I buy crumble as opposed to pellets) costs and how much nutrition it delivers!

My pullets get feed plus scratch plus all of our fruit and veggie scraps and free range several hours a week to scratch for bugs and such. And grit and oyster shells too. I am fairly confident that they are getting the proper nutrition, we get two eggs a day from four pullets.

 

[elmo]

Quote:
True, but were they good layers and healthy, too?

 

[rainbowgardens]

They were healthy, but probably didn't lay as many eggs as our modern hens do.
They had a more diverse diet from ranging around other farm livestock. They could eat spilled feed, pick through poos from cattle and horses, finding seeds and maggots. They were able to find bugs in orchard fruit. Meat scraps from butchering was thrown to them, extra milk often came their way.

Often, the only feed that was given to them was a handful of scratch thrown out into the yard in the morning to get them on their way.

 

[chookchick]

If your chickens are allowed to free-range, they can pick up the nutrition that they need through bugs, seeds, grass etc...If they are not free-ranged (or let out very little) it is imperative that we supply ALL the nutrients that they need so they can be happy and healthy. Eggs need a lot of protein--if they don't get enough, they will quit laying, start egg eating, or become very unhealthy as they pull protein from their own bodies. Make sure they get all the nutrition, and grit and oystershell, that they need.

 

[ella]

Even free ranging won't give every hen all she needs to be healthy. Unless you have a wild type breed and live in the right climate they still need help to survive much less thrive. Chickens are domestic animals, they need help from people or they won't make it. You wouldn't expect your dog or cat to survive on table scraps and whatever he can hunt would you?

Chicken feed is the best cheapest thing for them. You can custom mix feed if you're concerned about the quality of ingredients, but it will be more expensive than buying commercially available feed.