Each time you go to tend the flock, you travel 8 miles to the allotment on two different busses, tend the birds & then travel 8 miles home on two different busses... because the person living next to the allotment _______ (oh SO many things come to mind.)
Thank you, Shad! That is helpful. I’ve been giving each morning, EITHER a shredded carrot plus a shredded zucchini, some shredded cabbage or chopped kale, a dairy treat (lowfat greek yogurt and/or cottage cheese), a can of unsalted sardines or chopped slice of beef liver, a pint of blueberries, a couple tomatoes, OR some combination of a couple things just listed here. They also get a little bit of sprouted wheat berries daily. I was doing 2 tablespoons sprouted four days for 10 chickens, but recently backed it down to one tablespoon after Flash’s soft egg (I don’t want to dilute tge calcium in tgeir feed too far… oyster shell is always available, but I think some of them who need it don’t eat it. They are getting about half an hour ranging after work, but will get an hour more after daylight savings kicks in this weekend. They get several hours on the weekends.
Shad, I am curious. Why would you consider grass to be ‘forage’ and therefore freely available (assuming free ranging), but Kale and cabbage are ‘treats’ and should therefore be limited?
When the ex-batts arrived we were feeding them twice a day and we really thought they were gluttons. They threw themselves on the feed to the point of jumping in our arms to have a go at it first. They always began screaming for hunger an hour before the second feeding. We were kind of worried. People told us to try to let them full feeders all day to eat as they would, and see how this went. This is what we do now, they waste a little more, but they're not worrying that they will be dying of hunger and acting like gluttons. In fact they usually don't eat for most of the afternoon, until an hour or so before bed.
. Yes, I was going to make the same kind of comment. Not the same circumstances but I have seen sleeping hens poop, definitely!
I have had hens lay in the middle of the night but not from the roost. They few times it has happened they have come down from the roost in the dark and stumbled their way to the nest boxes.When the ex-batts arrived we were feeding them twice a day and we really thought they were gluttons. They threw themselves on the feed to the point of jumping in our arms to have a go at it first. They always began screaming for hunger an hour before the second feeding. We were kind of worried. People told us to try to let them full feeders all day to eat as they would, and see how this went. This is what we do now, they waste a little more, but they're not worrying that they will be dying of hunger and acting like gluttons. In fact they usually don't eat for most of the afternoon, until an hour or so before bed.
What I have always wondered, is whether egg laying woke them up. We had two hens that used to lay during the night for months , it was a pain because the eggs got poop all over.
