Some questions about preventing obesity and cleaning feeders

[Jemma Rider]

I’m pretty simple. I would not feed a growing child a vegetarian diet. They can choose to be vegan or whatever they’d like as adults.
Chickens choose to eat bugs etc. because they are genetically wired from the dawn of time to eat meat.
God did not make vegetarian chickens.
My hens favorite treat is marinated bbq’d chicken breasts!!
Fish are good vegetarian Pets. Oh wait nope wrong again.

There are vegetarian fish, i own a few. There are many herbivore animals i can keep as pets, i have a tortoise who is herbivore, there's also Uromastix lizards a close relative to the bearded dragon (which i also own, they are omnivorous so i regularly buy insects to feed her). There's also many different species of rodents and other reptiles, reptiles are really the only thing i know much about.

 

[Morrigan]

I'm so relieved other people have algae in the waterers. Even putting them in shady spots, I get tons of green algae growing. I was driving myself crazy trying to keep them clean, and got tired of scrubbing and vinegar treatments, and found the only thing that really made it look clean was bleach. Bleaching my waterers every few days to keep them sparkling just wasn't going to happen, and I didn't feel that was good environmental stewardship. So, now there is algae in them. I haven't noticed a change in the health of my chickens.

 

[Justso]

Is algae in waterers bad for chickens? I've noticed algae growth in my plastic waterer but have been putting off cleaning cuz I'm a bit of a lazy bastard and convinced myself that it's actually a good source of nutritional value for them.

Algae growth reduces oxygen and raises alkalinity (not good but not lethal) . It just changes the environment for other bad things to thrive. I'm lazy too, I fill my large waterer about once a week and add a splash of vinegar to retard algae growth. Copper is a good idea too! You could throw a hank of wire in there.

 

[Morrigan]

Algae growth reduces oxygen and raises alkalinity (not good but not lethal) . It just changes the environment for other bad things to thrive. I'm lazy too, I fill my large waterer about once a week and add a splash of vinegar to retard algae growth. Copper is a good idea too! You could throw a hank of wire in there.

Rats. I hate dealing with the algae.