Persnickety chickens

[LesleyS]

We feed our chickens scratch grains. Well, we used to. Now they won't eat it! What's up with that and what do you feed your chickens?

 

[Ursuline Chick]

Welcome from New Orleans. That is a great question. I am not an expert, but it is really important to feed laying hens a good quality layer feed, scratch grains are more of a treat, like meal worms and table scraps, which should be limited, as they are treats They should also have free choice crushed oyster shells or crushed egg shells to insure the girls have enough calcium. This helps to prevent shell less eggs and egg bound hens. IMHO apple cider vinegar will not do anything to help your chickens.
When my child tried the picky eating thing (as most kids do) the doctor told me not to worry, he would not starve, when he got hungry, he would eat. It worked, I think it will work with you chickens as well. Just make sure the majority of their food is healthy food.

 

[swamphiker]

Scratch feed has a lot of filler and shouldn't be the main feed, just occasional small treats. Your chickens will have more complete nutrition from chicken feed with 16-20% protein, I use an 18% protein all-flock feed and supplement with oyster shells from calcium, but sometimes my feed store is out and I buy layer feed. My chooks also get occasional mealworms and food scraps as treats.

 

[HeatherKellyB]

I have no input but a few questions instead. Is this a two, three, etc grain scratch? Have you checked the date to make sure it's not old? I recently purchased a scratch called 7/11 or something along those lines and I'm curious about how unhealthy it is. My birds pick a few things out of it and leave the rest, but it's fed as a limited treat only. Mostly because my birds are locked up full time now that the risk of HPAI is higher.

 

[DonyaQuick]

If you're using the scratch as a treat as other said and they just suddenly started ignoring it, give the bag a sniff and also dig around to see what it looks like further down to make sure it looks ok. Every time mine have started refusing something all of a sudden that they liked before, it meant there was mold further down in the bag and I just hadn't seen yet.