Trying to go corn-less

[cozycritters]

I have some health problems including food allergies and I want to avoid eating corn by eating my chickens' eggs. (BTW this is premature, they are still all incubating!

)

I do want to have a balanced diet for them and I live in AZ, so I can grow things pretty much all year 'round. I'm going to be getting one of those big bags of birdseed and seed the run where they will live before I move them there. I also intend to sprout oats, etc. for them.

Anyone else not feed corn to their chickens? If so, what is your feed regime like?

TIA!

 

[kla37]

Interesting question, looking forward to reading the responses you get! (If I withheld corn from my girls they would gang up and attack me in the middle of the night....

)

 

[KimberlyJ]

Quote:
Me too....My girls all time favorite food is corn on the cob.

 

[shaft0463]

I use corn in my mix, but it would be easy to eliminate.

I do alfalfa pellets, rice bran, bird seed, sunflower seeds, and some Costco cat food, ground in a blender. I add corn to it because they like it, but you could leave the corn out. Just don't put oats in your blender. It seems to kill them.

 

[cozycritters]

The cat food is largely corn also, right?

 

[Lesa]

No need to feed corn. I prefer the wild bird seed- cheap and nutritious. I mix my oyster in with that, as well. Chickens do like corn- but they like most everything, so I don't think they would miss it...

 

[cozycritters]

I just can't imagine that it would be in their natural diet

 

[centrarchid]

Quote:
This is something I have thought about a lot myself and have some emperical data to backup.

When I rely upon foods grown on site (in Missouri or Indiana), each bird requires about an acre plus a water supply. Supplementing by adding feeds of most kinds, especially those high in protein reduce area required / bird. The more and higher the quality the food the more the the area can be reduced until ultimately your are restricted to the area of a coop.

Your birds will damage planted forage bass by trampling and scratching to to get and food items growing among planted forage. The plants, as vegetable matter, not just seed, provide a considerable portion of the birds energy and vitamin requirments with a lesser percentage of protein needs. The seeds are much more protein and energy dense. Insects and other small animals help a lot with protein but in reality much of such food items are a form of drift (they move in from adjacent areas as local items harvested. A problem with many plants desired as a seed source either can not provide vegetable matter and seeds at same time of folage is toxic to some degree. If planted forage denied to birds until seed produced, seed production will be greatly increased but then you will have to worry about wild birds harvesting before chickens do.

 

[fargosmom]

Quote:
Cats cannot digest grains, so any decent cat food should be meat-based.

 

[Cargo]

Here you go: Cascade Layer Poultry Feed, Organic