jenniferlamar70
Songster
Wow! I haven't been around ducks since I was a teenager so can't help with them. Chickens are easier for me to manage now as we keep them for pets but with a bonus surprise egg-layer in our Breda.
What we do is get organic unheated, unpressed, non-pelleted, non-crumbled loose Scratch n Peck brand of layer feed with 18% protein and has oyster shell in it -- but we provide an at-will extra supply of oyster shell for the laying hens that need/want it. A hen or roo that doesn't need extra calcium will ignore it in the feed mix. We also get the organic Scratch n Peck 3-grain scratch mix which is (I believe) barley/wheat/oats that we keep in a treadle feeder for hens that don't want the layer mix. Lately I've been considering getting some pelleted or pressed organic crumbles as an added feeding bonus for the Silkies since their beaks are so small and are such dainty eaters.
The first feeding in the morning we only provide the layer feed and have a side bowl of a little wild bird seed mix (little or no hard corn pieces since the Silkies won't eat the hard corn kernels) and we might scatter a small handful on the ground so there are several different places the hens can go to eat without bothering each other. We put ice cubes in their Brite Tap nipple valve water jug during this heatwave.
A couple hours later we put out a round slice of cantaloupe with center pulp and seeds. We put out some fish flakes or dry meal worms scattered on the ground for their foraging. A couple hours later we visit with them by slicing up our home-grown cukes in circles and hand-feed to them (we want them to keep tame). Later in the day we might feed them some cooked salmon or thawed cooked small shrimp or half a can of meaty high-protein catfood or cooked turkey or lamb. Sometimes we feed fresh corn sliced off the cob. We vary and limit these treats.
Every late afternoon when the hens do their last foraging before roost we offer cooked organic brown rice mixed with Rooster Booster vitamins per directions and a sprinkle of Brewers' Yeast powder and some bee pollen mixed into the rice. Our hens love the aromatic varieties of brown rice (jasmine, basmati, texmati) with the added supplements camouflaged in the rice kernels. We don't use white rice since the cooked organic brown is richer in nutrition. I got the rice mix idea from a Silkie breeder and modified my recipe to use brown rice instead of white and added vitamins, Brewer's Yeast, and bee pollen rather than her recipe with broccoli which my Silkies hate. In winter we scatter raw shelled sunflower seeds but not in summer since they don't need the extra fat content then.
For a week at the beginning of each month we switch from Rooster Booster general vitamin granules to Rooster Booster Multi-Wormer granules to add to the afternoon rice mix. If a hen is broody, or molting, or laying a lot, we bring her in from roost (the chickens are easier to handle then) and give her just one drop of children's no-iron Poly-Vi-Sol liquid vitamin maybe 1 or 2x per week. Our Silkies will slurp the vitamin drop directly from the palm of our hand! I never have to shove vitamins or medicine in a syringe down their throats because they will drink them from our hand! Vet still can't believe it~LOL! For some reason hens during molt or brooding lose their appetites and look generally reclusive or lethargic so a vitamin boost helps nutrition. There are chicken vitamin supplements like Rooster Booster, etc, but sometimes a lethargic chicken doesn't eat well enough to eat all the supplements she needs. For molting chickens some people use Feather Fixer feed but I've never used it yet. I keep my molters well-supplied with protein foods. We keep quinoa, chia, and flax seeds on hand to scatter as foraging seeds.
During heatwaves we will give the hens blueberries, a watermelon slice, a hand-fed banana, chopped-up fine chard or greens but nothing stringy that could impact their crops. No apple seeds, raw potato skins, or avocados with skin or seeds, no chocolate. I personally don't give them cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, or anything from the cruciferous or nightshade plant family. But every owner has feeding quirks for their hens and those were my personal choices after reading this poultryhelp website: http://web.archive.org/web/20160313051928/http://poultryhelp.com/toxicplants.html We don't feed any more than our 4 chickens can consume in 10 minutes. Free-range or backyard open-range chickens are grazers and don't necessarily gobble up huge quantities of produce. To keep flies and rotting to a minimum we clean up any produce that the chickens don't finish in a few minutes but usually it will be gone.
As for herbs I think that is a personal choice of what the owners research and want to use. There are commercially-sold nesting box herbs but I've never tried them. I grow a lot of herbs but my hens are not particularly crazy about them the way they love my home-sprouted greens seeds. Find what your chickens like best and sneak their chicken vitamins into it. I believe Rooster Booster is the only FDA-approved chicken vitamin but I know there are some powdered supplements that can be added to water. It's a pain to keep refreshing the vitamin water every day so I choose to use the Rooster Booster products and liquid no-iron children's Poly-Vi-Sol instead.
One product I absolutely refuse to use is diatomaceous earth. After reading the hazardous warning to wear gloves, mask, and goggles to protect from inhaling it I couldn't figure how to put those protective things on my chickens ~ LOL! I've had a couple hens over the years with respiratory issues and I don't need to add DE to their respiratory problems (or myself)! Dust-bathing is dusty enough for them! But to each his own - it's just what I do. Manufacturers will sell anything and market it for chickens without the product necessarily being good for chickens so every owner has to decide for themselves.
As you already know housing, feeding, preventative health maintenance, supplementation, medications, etc, can be a widely personal decision for each owner depending on the number of birds they have, what breeds, environment, space, etc. What works for my 4 hens might not work for an owner of 50 mixed breeds on their property.
Didn't mean to talk your ear off
Lmao no worries. I'm a big talker too. With 4 kids I can hardly type what I want to thought and I never have time to spell check so sorry about that lol. I have been using lots of save a chick products. I haven't used the rooster booster but it sounds like something I need to look into.
diatomaceous earth is helpful for us just because we have so many chickens that it tends to draw in bugs and ants. Things I don't want crawling on them while they nest. I haven't used it for worming but I think we will try it over worm medicine once a year just because I get paranoid about them lol. 
