The 10% Treat Rule - Weight or Volume?

[aart]

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

1 quart has 192 teaspoons or 64 tablespoons

 

[123RedBeard]

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

Roughly 200 teaspoons per quart

Roughly 50 teaspoons per cup

On average ... a full size Large Fowl laying hen eats 1/4 pound of feed per day ...

Roughly a pound of feed is about 3 cups ... so roughly 150 teaspoons per day of commercial feed.

150 teaspoons X 10% = 15 teaspoons per day of "non-scienctific nutritionally balanced commercial feed" ... or "treats"

One quart (200 tsp) ÷ 15 tsp (per bird) = will provide 13.3 birds with their 10% "treat allowance"

Edit to add ... looks like aart beat me to it ... while I was figuring ...

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Lol, thanks, y'all. Doesn't look like I was overfeeding them by much then, does it? But in addition to these table scraps, they are also on permanent pasture so they have constant forage and all the bugs they can catch. So they don't really "need" any treats from the kitchen at all. Kind of amazing they eat any commercial feed at all, I suppose.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Actually @123RedBeard 's math is confusing to me, but don't worry about it, I'm a little math dyslexic.

 

[123RedBeard]

Also ... something to think about ...

These " scienctific nutritionally balanced commercial feeds", promoted by feed companies and large scale chicken farmers (and even quite a few small scale "BYC" farmers) are actually designed for, and with the factory farming model in mind ...

So let's reason among ourselves here at BYC ...

Even with the much preached number here at BYC (and lots of other places too!) About the 4/10 sq ft "rule" ... while tiny in my opinion, and will quickly turn a "fresh-natural run" into a barren moon scape of plain dirt in a month ...

The commercial egg chicken factory farms ... usually have no more than 1 square foot (sq ft) provided per bird ...

So ... the basic "minumum recommended" BYC sq ft per bird, is 14 time greater than the commercial chicken gets ...

In my mind, and my opinion ... is that there MUST be a different nutritional need for the two different living conditions ... right?

Do you think that a chicken that never sees the sun, just might need different nutritional requirements than how you keep your chickens?

While the factory farms do usually have fans, do you think the air quality is half as good as the air your chickens breathe?

Do you think that fresh air, and sunshine just maybe has something to do with how the chicken is able to digest it food?

And then there is the challenge of ... exercise, or the lack thereof ...

Just how much exercise do you think a "battery hen" gets in her little cage which is about 1 sq ft, and less than a foot high?

Do your chickens ... Walk? Run? Jump? Flap? Or even stretch? Do you not think that an active chicken just might have different nutritional needs than a stationary chicken?

IIRC ... our very own BYC member @ChickenCanoe ... worked with, or for a chicken feed company ... I'd value his participation in this discussion.

 

[123RedBeard]

Actually @123RedBeard 's math is confusing to me, but don't worry about it, I'm a little math dyslexic.

Basically comes out be be a quart of scraps, is about 10% of the daily diet for about 14 LF laying hens.

Of course ... it also sounds like your "diluting" the "balanced" feed ... with who knows what, and how much ... by "free-ranging" surprised you get any eggs at all out of the poor birds!

 

[123RedBeard]

I would say production increased by about 30% when we cut back on the "junk food. They get plenty of forage and bugs!

So do you think the egg production went up because of less kitchen scraps, or ... because they had a higher percentage of protein?

 

[Helloworld]

I give mine treats 10% of the time lol

 

[123RedBeard]

Roughly a pound of feed is about 3 cups ... so roughly 150 teaspoons per day of commercial feed.

150 teaspoons X 10% = 15 teaspoons per day of "non-scienctific nutritionally balanced commercial feed" ... or "treats"

Oops ... looks like my end of a long day tired brain missed a beat!

A pound is about 150 tsp, and a LF laying hen eats about a quarter of that ... so 150 ÷ 4 = 37 tsp of food per day (by volume)

37 tsp of food per day X 10%= 3.7 tsp ... so roughly a heaping TABLESPOON per chicken per day ...

One quart @ 200 tsp should be able to handle "treats" for 54 chickens ...

Hopefully I got it right this time, still haven't had my coffee yet!

 

[aart]

Chickens, unlike 'real math', are not finite and hard to quantify.
Observe and adjust.