Trouble with sunflower seeds???

[mamaKate]

I gave my pair a sunflower seed bell inside the coop for rainy days. My rooster got deathly ill and it took weeks of care to bring him out of it. I'm not sure it was the seed bell but I won't do it again.

 

[Tala]

I feed BOSS almost every day, they have had a cheap bag of bird seed, and they have had several of those treat bells and cheap suet cakes. I've gotten this stuff from WalMart and TSC, although I try to avoid the products with a "Bird Kote"/vitamin treatment whenever I can.

Ya'll must be getting a bad batch, or somehow lethally combining other factors, because I have 13 healthy chickens and they had a seed treat bell 3 days ago!

Be sure they have grit to grind up those sunflower seed shells!

 

[snowflake]

sorry about your hen, I give sun flower seed almost every day My birds all love it, no problems don't know what could have caused this, I would look for mold, that can be deadly

 

[Akane]

Did they get enough grit? I feed boss a lot and mine have been making off with the neighbor's various bird seed mixes for a year now. They love having the chickens wander over there and actually try to tell me I can't kill or sell any because they like them so much. I butchered some extra roosters a few weeks ago and they had crops nearly the size of baseballs full of bird seed. They've been eating this amount daily which the neighbor has not cared and keeps putting more down but I have not been happy about. I'd like some eggs not nutrient deprived hens who aren't eating their layer.

Without grit though I imagine any seeds but especially large ones like sunflowers are rather tough to digest. I think I got in trouble for the random rooster massacre because my coop suddenly gained layers of hay and the door was opening and closing itself in the mornings and evenings. She thinks the chickens need more warmth (the hay was gone in 3 days) and feels sorry for them on days they don't get let out as much. I figure with a 170sq ft coop and the ground covered in several feet of snow they can stay locked up and eat their layer at least one day out of the weekend. Especially since there are several fewer in roosters in there now.