Not eating pellets

[Rain Dance]

I mix a two kinds of layer food. One is with cracked corn and that, the other straight pellets. They will not eat the pellets, bar none. The layer with corn is 15% protein and the straight pettels is 21% protein. What should I do?

 

[azygous]

You're facing something similar to trying to get children to eat plain oatmeal when they also have the choice of Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs. (Bleah!) Of course, they will go for the sweet stuff, and corn is sweet, make no mistake.

To get them to eat the pellets, you need to take away the sweet stuff. You might be able to transition them if you grind up the pellets into crumbles at the beginning of this switch.

 

[NatJ]

Do they like the pellets if you make them into a wet mash? (Just add water to pellets and let it sit for a minute or two.)

Chickens are really good at picking things out of a mixed feed, so you might have better luck just feeding the parts separately. You could give a limited amount of one, and free choice of the other, so they end up eating the right total amount of both.