Hi, I knew next to nothing about caring for chickens before I had four abandoned roosters dumped off in my neighborhood, after over a week of trying to find them a home unsuccessfully, I decided that I would just take them in and give them the best lives that I could. Everything has been great so far, despite being a very careful trial-and-error process.
We bought a bag of locally produced chicken feed which I give them a couple scoops of daily, whose ingredients I cannot remember fully and aren't listed on the bag. It simply says "crude protein 16%, crude fat 7%, crude fiber 5%" and "grain products, plant protein products, processed grain by products, soybean oil." The guy at the feed store told us the list but didn't give it to us on paper, but I remember at least that it had corn, soybeans, and oyster shell. It has a bunch of other little grains whose names escape me at the moment.
After a few days of having it, we noticed on morning that it looked like a roach had eaten himself to death in the bag, his belly was swollen huge and he was on his back twitching and kicking. It crossed my mind that maybe he was poisoned from the ingredients, and I tried to look stuff up, but couldn't find anything. I had to put him out of his misery after hoping for a few hours that he'd come to. It happened again today and is really disturbing, it looks like he's in severe pain and has no control over his movements, wrenching his head back and convulsing, all limbs spasming frantically, his mouthparts and throat stretching out and open like he's trying to vomit. It's horrifying. Is there some ingredient in normally used in random local chicken feed that is poisonous to roaches? I've searched Google for a few hours combined between both incidents to only find one forum post from a bearded dragon forum that describes anything similar, and there were no real answers of conclusions reached. Thanks
We bought a bag of locally produced chicken feed which I give them a couple scoops of daily, whose ingredients I cannot remember fully and aren't listed on the bag. It simply says "crude protein 16%, crude fat 7%, crude fiber 5%" and "grain products, plant protein products, processed grain by products, soybean oil." The guy at the feed store told us the list but didn't give it to us on paper, but I remember at least that it had corn, soybeans, and oyster shell. It has a bunch of other little grains whose names escape me at the moment.
After a few days of having it, we noticed on morning that it looked like a roach had eaten himself to death in the bag, his belly was swollen huge and he was on his back twitching and kicking. It crossed my mind that maybe he was poisoned from the ingredients, and I tried to look stuff up, but couldn't find anything. I had to put him out of his misery after hoping for a few hours that he'd come to. It happened again today and is really disturbing, it looks like he's in severe pain and has no control over his movements, wrenching his head back and convulsing, all limbs spasming frantically, his mouthparts and throat stretching out and open like he's trying to vomit. It's horrifying. Is there some ingredient in normally used in random local chicken feed that is poisonous to roaches? I've searched Google for a few hours combined between both incidents to only find one forum post from a bearded dragon forum that describes anything similar, and there were no real answers of conclusions reached. Thanks
Interesting situation. I doubt that the ingredients poisoned the roaches, but do not have the answer to your question. Hopefully someone else will have more input.
