rather starve than eat pellets????

[kezabel]

mine would rather eat the scratch than their pellets, the pellets can sit in the feeder all week but after a couple of days when I have run out of scratch they start eating the pellets, when they are hungry they'll eat them don't worry to much.

 

[elmo]

I agree with the other commenter...they may not recognize the pellets as food. Try crushing some and mixing it in with pellets to see if that helps, or even mix in some scratch. Once one of the hens gets started eating, the others will probably follow.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I had the opposite happen. When I first got mine, they were picking out the small small pieces of the crumbles and leaving the larger pieces so I used a blender to reduce the sizes. At about one week of age, they started picking out the larger pieces and leaving the powder, so I quit grinding it. When I switched from crumbles to pellets at 19 weeks, I tried mixing the pellets with the crumbles, thinking to transition. They started picking out the pellets and leaving the crumbles. I had to let them run out of pellets before they would finish off the crumbles. They are all different and I sure cannot explain it.

You might try reducing the size of the pellets some, maybe with a blender, and gradually increase the size. Mine still spill a lot of pellets on the ground, but unlike the crumbles, they will clean them up. I let the pellets run out about once a week in the feeder so they will clean them up, plus they clean out the food in the feeder so it does not get too old and moldy.

I do think the pellets are more efficient so it is worth some effort to get them to switch over. I also know chickens do not always listen to reason or do what you want them to.

Good luck!

 

[sommrluv]

I made up this special, whole grain feed from my local feed store, so excited about it....yup, chickens wouldn't touch it.

They'd even take a piece from my hand, and drop it, like...ewwwww. I left it for less than a week. One day i even sprinkled flour on there to see if they'd disturbed the food...didn't touch it.

We had to grind that whole dang 150 pounds up. By hand.

We switched to the sunfresh, and they are wild about it.