Question: Pellets vs. Crumble

[Mother of Chaos]

Our Ladies are wishy washy. Some refuse to eat pellets, others refuse to eat crumbles.
Some go through and pick out any goodies they can and try not to eat either. We mix starter feed with ground up mealworms for the chicks, but the older Ladies will sometimes get in there and hog everything.
They will pick out the seeds and stand by a pile of pellets, or crumbles, and ask why we are trying to starve them.
Feed them straight crumbles or pellets and they will follow you around like you are trying to make them eat rocks.
Yes, they have been spoiled.

Mine did that for a month and then magically started eating pellets. Maybe they saw that the two younguns (who prefer pellets to the whole grain blends), haven’t died from pellets.

I’m currently mixing Kalmbach 18% Chickhouse Reserve (whole grain blends) with Kalmbach 20% Flock Maker pellets in a very rough 50/50 ratio for both mash/fermented and dry in a hanging feeder. I’m considering switching to all grain blend in their mash and all pellets for their dry.

The nice thing about serving the whole grain type feeds as a mash or fermented is that once it’s well-moistened, they eat it all. No beaking aside some of it.