Silkie thread!

[Hinotori]

I'm lucky that the store I get my feed from gives a 10% military and vet discount. So the 50 lb bag of Flockraiser ends up costing about $16.

 

[FirstTimeClucky]

I feed 18% layer feed, but they also get chopped greens and/or veg that I add fish food pellets to, or hard boiled egg 2-3 times per week. They also get mixed seeds.

My partridge pullet has discovered a new source of protein, though I'm not sure how much she actually gets. Since I trimmed their crests so they can see, she can now see fruit flies and she snaps at them. It's pretty funny to watch her craning her neck as high as it will go, then going round in circles snapping. I have to wonder if she ever actually catches one.

 

[FirstTimeClucky]

Another thing to keep an eye out is making sure the silkies don't hit their heads on anything. Polish chickens also have the openings in their skulls. I had a polish rooster who was protecting the flock against the lawn mower (All hens safely inside the coop, Rooster was in the run). The rooster was flying all over the place and hit his head and instantly fell over. I hoped it was just a concussion, and I tried to nurse him back to health but after a week and a half of no improvement I put him to rest. He wasn't eating/drinking on his own. He would 'move' on his own, but this consisted of flapping his wings once or twice and then falling over. He never was able to stand on his own. It was really sad.

Sorry to hear about your rooster! It's frustrating and sad when there's something wrong that you can't fix. My first chicken was a Maran hen who couldn't walk. She just stopped eating and died. I think she was in pain and that's why she stopped eating. The vet couldn't find anything wrong other than her deformed hip which he thought was a birth defect.

With my Silkies I don't have anything to worry about. They're kept indoors, in a pen with no roof. They can't fly as high as the top of the pen. I've given them a box to hide in, my partridge likes to jump up on top of it and use it as a takeoff point. She doesn't get very far. I keep two species of quail (coturnix and button quail), they are in cages with netting strung below the roofs so they don't hurt their heads. They are well known for their habit of "flushing" straight up when something frightens them.

 

[moomoodiddy]

I'm lucky that the store I get my feed from gives a 10% military and vet discount. So the 50 lb bag of Flockraiser ends up costing about $16.

I wonder if they would give me a broke college kid discount?

 

[Hinotori]

I wonder if they would give me a broke college kid discount?

Some give AG students a discount. I've offered to go with local friends when they need feed.

 

[Sylvester017]

Doesn't matter the breed of chicken. The red like that almost always means rooster. Very, very rarely do you get a hen with it as a color pattern.

Yep, I forgot to take into account the red! Wasn't it the prettiest Silkie too? There are so many gorgeous varieties popping up all the time.

 

[Sylvester017]

About expensive feed: I like to get nonGMO noCORN/SOY organics and talk about expensive! I was fortunate to find a feed store not too far a distance that breaks down the huge bags into 5-lb sizes for us since we only have 5 chickens. Otherwise a 40 or 50-lb bag for us just wouldn't get used up fast enough before spoilage or bugs. Refrigerating the feed is what we do with the 5-lb bags but can't refrigerate a 50-pounder!!!

 

[Sylvester017]

Added note to expensive feed: We add higher protein Turkey grow crumbles to our organic feed so that the average protein feed is about 20-21% with oyster shell/calcium carbonate free-will on the side. Fresh produce/fruit as a single daily treat and/or cooked organic brown rice lightly sprinkled w/selenium powder, brewer's yeast, bee pollen, and rooster booster is a daily staple too. My visiting DS likes to feed a multi-grain roll to our little greedy buzzards when he stops by! He takes pics to show his friends -- says my chickens are "legendary" in his crowd!

 

[Hinotori]

I do feed scratch that has corn in it as a treat. You can tell with my white birds. That yellow hint in the feathers from both corn and sun

 

[Sylvester017]

I do feed scratch that has corn in it as a treat. You can tell with my white birds. That yellow hint in the feathers from both corn and sun

More during winter or cooler weather we feed nonGMO canned corn as a hand-treat to our little flock of 5 zoned hens/no roos. As for bird seed, we do our best to find the type with little or no hard corn bits only because our hens don't eat the hard corn and I don't feel like paying for feed that doesn't get eaten. I've had several different breeds of chickens in the flock and only the Mourning Doves will venture to eat the dry corn (only because our chickens leave it behind).