The 10% Treat Rule - Weight or Volume?

[Elsveta641]

"Like a Roman emperor throwing rose petals ...!" @Elsveta641 , that's priceless! Are you a professional writer? I throw scratch out to some of my chickens that way too, but I never had that wonderful of a word picture for my actions, thank you for that! In another area, I pitch it like a fishwife tossing out entrails from the day's catch!

Haha no I'm not a writer but thank you. It's just easiest for me to describe a scene with a similar familiar one. Like once my adult son was striding across the barnyard throwing rooster guts to the barn cats. They leaped and danced and cried out with gratitude and adoration as they followed him. It was like the Hosanna scene from Jesus Christ Superstar lol!

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Lol. Yup, I can see it.

 

[21hens-incharge]

I believe for people new to keeping chickens it is important to understand how and what to feed them.
Many people now being able to keep chickens in their area have never kept livestock type animals.
It is a huge learning curve.

General guidelines are helpful.
There are a lot of threads I have seen where birds are not doing well and it turns out the keeper is giving several cups of treats a day to a very small flock of less than 10 birds.

Do I stick to the 10% as a very strict rule never to be broken?
No.
On occasion I give them scratch in the morning and then some watermelon in the afternoon. Not every day or even every other day.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

This 10% rule has been very helpful to us. We used to give our chickens huge amounts of kitchen scraps but didn't get many eggs. We have cut way back, in fact are hardly giving them any now, and egg production has increased. We've also moved their feed into a homemade no-spill bucket feeder and are saving money because there is virtually no waste. Thanks, BYC!

 

[trumpeting_angel]

I’m pretty stingy with my scratch, fruit, and kitchen scraps, but I do feed them grass and weeds (and the occasional insect) because they aren’t going outside the run yet.

I give a couple of spoons full of yogurt (low fat) a couple times a week, and some frozen fruit or corn when it’s ridiculously hot, like yesterday. But the most my four girls get of scratch is a couple of tablespoons (for 4 pullets), 2-3/x week.

I don’t want them to have fatty livers or heart problems.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

This 10% rule has been very helpful to us. We used to give our chickens huge amounts of kitchen scraps but didn't get many eggs. We have cut way back, in fact are hardly giving them any now, and egg production has increased. We've also moved their feed into a homemade no-spill bucket feeder and are saving money because there is virtually no waste. Thanks, BYC!

Just out of curiosity...how many chickens do you have and how much much kitchen scraps were you giving them? And how much has egg production increased?

I know you probably don't have detailed/exact numbers...but was just curious if you could share ballpark numbers.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Well, at the time we probably had 15-20 chickens. And we had a bowl in the kichen that would hold, oh I'm guessing....maybe a quart or more of scraps? Sometimes more, it would get overflowing. We had two bowls, one for things the would eat and one for things they wouldn't eat, that would just draw raccoons and such. You know, potato peels, onion ends, cucumber peels, avocado skins, banana peels... but the bowl of chicken goodies was stuff we knew they liked and would clean up. They also got a bowl of scratch morning and evening. I would say production increased by about 30%.

Right now we have a whole different flock and they get W

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Well, at the time we probably had 15-20 chickens. And we had a bowl in the kichen that would hold, oh I'm guessing....maybe a quart or more of scraps? Sometimes more, it would get overflowing. We had two bowls, one for things they would eat and one for things they wouldn't eat, that would just draw raccoons and such. You know, potato peels, onion ends, cucumber peels, avocado skins, banana peels... We didn't put that stuff out there at all. But the bowl of chicken goodies was stuff we knew they liked and would clean up. They also got a bowl of scratch morning and evening. I would say production increased by about 30% when we cut back on the "junk food. They get plenty of forage and bugs!

Right now we have a whole different flock and they get WAY less treats than the old flock. Hard to tell about production as my new layers are just coming on, but at the same time it is hotter than the hubs of Hades here. I should know more in a week or so but I definitely feel we are on the right track. I am getting six eggs a day instead of three, so that's 100% increase, right?

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Thank you for sharing @BigBlueHen53. Really interested that a fairly small amount of scraps (a bowlful of treats among 15-20 chickens sounds like less than 10% of their daily intake) would make that much of a difference.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

A quart or more seems like more than a teaspoon per bird to me.