Putting fat chickens on a diet

[NatJ]

They do like disturbed bedding, yeah, I can try raking/digging more often. Their bedding is a cold compost of various organic material - wood chips, dry leaves, yard waste, etc. and looks more interesting than a uniform generic bedding, like all sand, or all wood chips. There are things to find, and the chickens spend a good part of the day scratching around and digging craters regardless of whether I've thrown anything new in there. I feel bad that I am unable to let them out, but to compensate, I have put a lot of effort into giving them a large, varied and interesting run to hang out in.

Some chickens seem to ignore it unless the person does something, so I was thinking of ways to "do something" without adding calories. But if your chickens already spend a lot of time scratching and digging in their bedding, you may not need to do anything else to encourage that.

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

Do you think the crumble would just get lost and encourage pests? I can try to sift out only the larger chunks and use that to scatter in the run, but it still won't hold up as well as pellets...



I already did that. They only use the bottom two levels

So if you are feeding crumbles, an idea would be to switch to pellets. Our hens didn’t like them as much, so seemed to eat less .

 

[NatJ]

So if you are feeding crumbles, an idea would be to switch to pellets. Our hens didn’t like them as much, so seemed to eat less .

Do you know if they ate less, or if they just wasted less? I know it can be really hard to tell when the wasted parts are tiny bits that disappear into the bedding.

 

[K0k0shka]

So if you are feeding crumbles, an idea would be to switch to pellets. Our hens didn’t like them as much, so seemed to eat less .

I can try that, but I'd need to wait until later in the year. My broody is due next week and the chicks will be raised with the flock, so it will be some time before they're able to eat pellets. And if I leave out both crumble and pellets, nobody's gonna eat the pellets

 

[aart]

I can try that, but I'd need to wait until later in the year. My broody is due next week and the chicks will be raised with the flock, so it will be some time before they're able to eat pellets. And if I leave out both crumble and pellets, nobody's gonna eat the pellets

You could give the pellets a spin in a blender and set up a creep feeder for the babies.

 

[NatJ]

You could give the pellets a spin in a blender and set up a creep feeder for the babies.

Or start a new bag of pellets for the hens, while using the remaining crumbles in a creep feeder for the babies.

 

[K0k0shka]

You could give the pellets a spin in a blender and set up a creep feeder for the babies.

[looks up creep feeder]

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

Do you know if they ate less, or if they just wasted less? I know it can be really hard to tell when the wasted parts are tiny bits that disappear into the bedding.

I didn’t scientifically study it or anything, but for the first week or so they were reluctant to eat the new pellets, period. It wasn’t an old mill date and the bag smelled fine…and they did start eating it normally after a bit. But they definitely were waiting for the “good food” to come back. I even got side eye and a couple hens flying up to the kitchen window to peck/yell at me about it . And the bags seemed to go further, but not sure about waste vs eating habits after the adjustment period.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Very helpful conversation, thanks everyone.

I bag and collect my dry leaves in the fall and start out with a fairly large stash each fall (several dozen bags). Then I periodically dump a new bag in the run, for the chickens to enjoy. It keeps them busy for a while. I do this year round. In the summer I do the same with lawn clippings and other yard waste.

The way I use scratch is actually to encourage the hens to move more, and simulate foraging behavior. I don't use much - just one handful - but I scatter it all over the run, so they have to go and look for it. My run has a lot of logs and things, and a shrub, so the chickens have to go under, over and around things. They will turn the bedding upside down inch by inch looking for every lost grain of scratch, and will do this all afternoon, just in case they missed some I'm not sure if the calories from the scratch cancel out the exercise of foraging for it, but that's the most reliable way to get them to move. I have built a jungle gym for them, but they are too lazy to use it... Sometimes I will tie a bunch of greens or hang a treat cage with lettuce in it somewhere on a higher branch, so they have to go up there to eat it. In the summer I cut branches from my yard and tie them up to the jungle gym, for the chickens to climb up and forage for greenery.

The ball of fat - oh definitely, that's where it goes! I need to fondle their butts and see if I can feel it from the outside. Once I cut a chicken up it's very obvious, but it can be hard to feel from the outside. If the fat only collected there, it probably wouldn't be such a big problem, but they also store fat on the liver and that's what scares me, because it can be fatal, and you can't feel for that from the outside.

The vet... I am not happy with this vet for many reasons (not just chicken-related, with my cat too). She was so set on this number, and that weight was the only way to truly judge if a chicken is fat. When, as you have all pointed out, weight is so relative and depends on so many things. She can say that it's just hard to tell if a chicken is fat, and offer other methods - like feeling for the fat deposit on the butt (lower abdomen). But she said no, over 7lbs is fat... which was a red flag to me. Another thing that she said which I find odd, is how much chickens should eat per day. She said I should isolate the "fat" hen with the health problem and put her on a diet, and that I should restrict her feed to 2 cups per day. That seemed way too much to me, so I asked her to clarify - cups, as in the measuring unit of cup? And she said yes. When I went home I weighed the crumble. Every recommendation I find online says something along the lines of 4 oz per chicken per day, or at most 4-6 oz. Well 2 cups weighs 10 oz!!! So to put her "on a diet", I need to feed this hen twice the usually recommended amount? I'm having a hard time trusting anything this vet has to say. So I'm back to square one as to whether my chickens are actually fat or not. I'm thinking of contacting their breeder and asking what his hens of this breed normally weigh when full grown...

2 CUPS a DAY???

Yeah, seriously math impaired.

The "thumb rule" is 1/4# per hen per day as a starting point (one that invlves a LOT of assumptions), and for most, 1/4# is about 1/2 cup - again, lots of assumptions. Now, that said, target numbers for MKe of feed are often given in a range of about 12 to 13.8 MJ/kg (I couldn't find any narrower recommend in my research building my calculator, and found feeds as low as 11MJ/ and as high as 14.5 MJ/ - meaining equal weights of "acceptable" feeds could vary roughly 33% in metabolizable energy content!!!!)

That's why the thumb rules are just a starting point. But 2 cups is 4x the recommended starting point, not the expected answer when talking about potential feed restriction.
Feel the butts, call the breeder, continue to monitor - that's a good start. And if misofrtune comes to you and you lose one? Open it up, and check for internal fat levels.

 

[Shadrach]

I have chicks every year, too, so I prefer crumble. But I can get a small bag of the same feed in pelleted form, to be used as "scratch" exclusively.

If you have chicks every year then am I right in assuming you eat your chickens?
If so, does it really matter if they are, if they are, overweight?