Not a fan of new food

[miles2go480]

Free ranging - depending on what's in the pasture - can have a marked effect on how much they eat. My own birds, seasonally dependent, eat between 15% and 35% less than expected as a result of free ranging my acres of weeds. In spite of, one of the hens I butchered yesterday had a little more fat than I like to see, so it appears I transitioned to winter-ration quantities sooner than I needed to. From crop contents, they've been finding a high tannin seed somewhere which I've yet to identify, roughly the size of a small-medium pinenut. Not knowing what it is, I don't know how much of it they have to eat, but nuts being high fat, and their crop having more than a few, I suspect its part of the cause.

If you are feeding a lot of driid flies and/or scratch, that would contribute to the birds eating less of the complete feed, whatever feed you offer. If you give a teenager doritos and hamburgers, they are going to eat doritos and hamburgers most of the time, rather than sitting down to the lean chicken, brown rice, snow peas, carrots, and peppers you've offered as a main course.

Thanks for the input. The are eating the food after I made mash with it. Decreased treats to a cup of grubs for all to share.

 

[Poodlemum]

I just switch straight over and never mix, we feed what’s cheapest whenever we need a new bag. When I tried mixing chick starter like recommended to switch brands, they just made a big mess. If they can’t pick out the preferred food, they just eat it all

 

[Judy Todd]

I personally expect my chickens to eat anything I put into their feeder and I don't particularly care if they "like" it or not.

How much they eat may or may not have to do with "liking" the feed.

Over Christmas I had to buy an emergency bag of the cheap layer feed from Walmart because we couldn't get to the farm store before it closed for their usual all-flock. I noticed that they went through that 50lb bag faster than usual -- my guess is that the lower nutritional quality resulted in them eating more.

IMO, if you are satisfied with the nutritional profile and the feed is not moldy, bug-infested, stale (check mill date on bag), etc. there is no reason to fuss with it to try to get the chickens to eat it.

No healthy animal will starve itself in the presence of food. Put the feed into the feeder, walk away, and let them eat what they eat.

Love it, common sense

 

[Donna Durepos]

I just switch straight over and never mix, we feed what’s cheapest whenever we need a new bag. When I tried mixing chick starter like recommended to switch brands, they just made a big mess. If they can’t pick out the preferred food, they just eat it all

Just like people they have their preference we've found. We've been raising chickens for almost 6 years now. We also found that not all feed is created equal. We had switched brands because we found so.e at our local hardware store. We started getting less eggs and our chickens were getting sickly and some passing away. I decided to go back to purina extra crumble and slowly things have gotten better. Eggs are firmer, we get more and chickens seem healthier again. We also make a scratch/snack for them on our own of things like barley, oats, rice, etc.

 

[miles2go480]

Just like people they have their preference we've found. We've been raising chickens for almost 6 years now. We also found that not all feed is created equal. We had switched brands because we found so.e at our local hardware store. We started getting less eggs and our chickens were getting sickly and some passing away. I decided to go back to purina extra crumble and slowly things have gotten better. Eggs are firmer, we get more and chickens seem healthier again. We also make a scratch/snack for them on our own of things like barley, oats, rice, etc.

I did a switch to Nutrena with adding warm oat soup and a few grubs. They have really taken to the Nutrena and eggs went from 7-8 a day to 12 -13 back to pre Dumor laying schedule.

 

[Donna Durepos]

I did a switch to Nutrena with adding warm oat soup and a few grubs. They have really taken to the Nutrena and eggs went from 7-8 a day to 12 -13 back to pre Dumor laying schedule.

There you go. That's way better. It's like us buying certain types of food, some ate better for us than others.