What do i feed SHOW BIRDS!!

[aveca]

OMG What were those naked chickens ?

I forgot sumpthin, When my mom throws out compost, often there is cottage cheese mixed in it...thats the first thing to dissappear when the chickens see it.... those old ladies. 13 is awfully old for a chicken, not saying that baby cow food is good for her ancient hens but they get it at least once a week ..I always tell her becareful what she throws out there . most of it dissappears within minutes, like me they go straight for the ice cream.

mine are the ones with the problems and only 4 get a sprinkle of calf manna and only 3 weeks befor a show and those are the only ones that havnt gone through the strange molt. So if you have an answer for that I would love to hear it, recomend a brand or something.besides anything with marygold and soybeans..I wonder if it has to do with those roundup ready soybeans, they are genetically modified beans .They spray round up all over the beans but they dont die because they somehow changed the genes of the bean, not sure how it works really but did read some on it. franken food if you will

So we are left with the question what do you recomend? I am going to go back to the oats and my own mix and to honest husband has complained ever since we switched feeds that the eggs give him the runs and they never used to...I didnt think those things affected eggs I mean sometimes free roamers eat poison Ivy berrys with no affect. Once the winter let up and I started letting them out again for the day he said it has been better...He asked me last week to get the oats again. Its just a bother to drive so far to get a mix..your left to fend for yourself here.I am a person who keeps everything spotless out there ..But I cant control what they put in feeds.

 

[SundownWaterfowl]

How many months before a show do you start getting them ready? Im planning to show in September and was wondering about this.

 

[aveca]

I live in NY state which show are you going to? Im goping to 2, one in Elmira NY in august and one in Bath NY in sept.

I start in mid june to get ready

 

[SundownWaterfowl]

Quote:
I go to the Cobleskill one each year. Last year I was there with 2 brahmas. I took 3 place for the pullet. The Elmira and Bath shows are too far away, 4 or more hours.

 

[Resolution]

Quote:
We all know the healthiest flocks are the ones that can find their own food. Calf manna is packed with milk products. That's hardly a bad thing. It's just not formulated for birds. I've used it. Before products came around that were formulated specifically for birds I used it with no hesitation. The only problem I experienced was with growing birds. If peafowl had the calf manna during their juvenile stage the bones ossified too early and the wings never developed properly. We also had situations where the legs of birds failed grow properly but this was years ago when I was experimenting with different feed mixtures. I didn't have a nutritionist at hand.

I have to reiterate that soy is not necessarily an issue. Its how its been processed and there are plenty of feed manufacturers that refuse to buy GM crops and will never process them in their production mills. The best product on the market is Farmers Helper. Mazuri is a second best. But Mazuri sells a maintenance diet ( a complete daily diet like a lay pellet) and Farmer's Helper only sells supplements. I'd utilise both. Use Mazuri for your maintenance and Farmers' Helper as your supplement.

There is soy in both products but I know that Farmers Helper is coming out with a soy free product line this winter.

Just remember to use extruded kibble versus typical pellet and never use a crumble or a mash- too dusty - leads to respiratory infections- and of course this starts as chicks. Better to purchase the extruded kibble and grind it or soak it yourself to feed your valuable chicks to prevent that respiratory system contamination to begin with.

I'd also follow Chris09 and GreatHorse suggestions. You can supplement an important % of their diets yourself. But you need to be consistent about it if its going to actually contribute to the overall health of the birds.

SunddownWaterfowl asked when to begin conditioning birds for competition. The first answer is that the best possible results will begin with the breeding stock that will ostensibly produce your show birds. Superior nutrition is going to make for superior sperm and superior egg yolks creating superior embryos. It goes without saying that this is what drives natural selection-even if you don't prescribe to the notion- there certainly is better survivability of chicks that get more bugs than those that don't etc.
Extensive studies have shown that the colour of eggshells of wild birds is directly linked to the quality of the mother's overall nutrition and the pigmentation and pattern of avian plumage is driven by nutrition and predation naturally. The bird that is most concealed against the leaf litter (female) survives her incubation and chick brooding period better than the one that does not. The chick that is most vividly coloured and patterned is better protected by its disruptive colouration on the forest floor than those that are less vividly pigmented and patterned ( in a healthy forest we can presume). The males of brilliantly coloured species attain their pigments through their ability to obtain superior nutrients throughout their life. Male birds with brilliant plumage are camouflaged at night, That is, it is difficult for nocturnal predators to see them. Having a very fine sheen to the plumage is prerequisite to this as light bends and refracts even at night. Iridescent plumage tends to reflect and absorb light.

So- feeding your show birds an optimal diet produces dramatically different pigmentation and the expression of certain patterns and skin colouration.
The chick that is hatched in an egg yolk built from these building blocks is going to develop in a very different looking bird than those that are not. It's just the rules of nature.

Since that isn't your first concern for this upcoming show, you should start anytime soon. Just get them on optimal nutrition as soon as humanly possible.
It's not just about better scores its about boosting immune system function and alleviating stress. .

I'd get an adult pair on Optimal Foragecakes as a weekly or daily supplement and put them on Mazuri Exotic Gamebird Maintenance as their daily ration.

As for naked chickens, these are a breed the ever industrious Israeli farmers have designed. It has no protective feathering obviously and very thin skin.
The birds are kept in controlled environments with air-conditioning and humidity levels have to be kept at very specific levels. They have many problems to work out but I understand that there is a great deal of promise in this breed.

 

[Chris09]

Quote:

The Rhode Island Red went from being the self-sufficient farm fowl of American history to
the big fat stupid chicken that had to be replaced every eight or ten months but laid a nice big brown egg. The hatcheries had to actually artificially inseminate some of the "better and more improved" strains...

If you are talking about Red from hatcheries, then that might be true but if you are talking about Red's that come from a good breeder then you are wrong. Reds from a good breeder will lay way past eight or ten months and still make a good dual purpose bird.

So that all American chicken breed the Rhode Island Red, did you know where it started?
The Rhode Island Red was created at the turn of the 19th century from crossing Malay Game roosters toBrown Leghorn and Cochin hens

The American Standard of Perfection says that it was the crossing of the Red Malay, Leghorn and native Asiatic fowl,
wile the founders of the Rhode Island Red Club say that it was the crossing of the
Chittagong (Brahma), Cochin, Red Shanghai, Black Breasted Malay and the Red Malay.
Some breeders believe the Dark Brown Leghorn may have also been added to raise the egg productivity.
(I myself tend to believe the background that the Rhode Island Red Club gives.)

The Rhode Island Red’s origin can be dated back to the middle 1840’s and one of the oldest breed of chicken to be developed in America.
The States of Rhode Island and Massachusetts should get the most credit for the development of the
Rhode Island Red breed. Poultry farmers in the area wanted a breed of hen that would produce a good amount of eggs a year and still dress out nice as a meat breed.
Captain Richard Wheatland that lived in Rhode Island around 1846 is the person responsible for the rich red color of the Rhode Island Red we see today and in 1954 the governor of Rhode Island signed into law that the Rhode Island Red chicken would be the state bird of Rhode Island.

The early Rhode Island Red sported three types of combs, two of which we still have today.
The first is the Pea comb that may owe its pea comb to the Chittagong, second the Single comb that got it’s comb from the Cochin and the third is the Rose comb that received it’s combed from the Shanghai.

Many breeds of poultry owe there heritage to the Rhode Island Red, breeds like the New Hampshire and the some lines of Production Reds where bread solely from the Rhode Island Red with no record of outside blood being introduced. Rhode Island Red’s also has been used in crosses to produce hybrid breeds such as the Red and Black Sex-Link’s and some breeder believe a second line of Production Red was produced by introducing Leghorn blood into the Rhode Island Red.

The Rhode Island Red color pattern is a modified Columbian color pattern that may have came from the Brahma blood that was used in the making of this breed.
The first modification to the Columbian color pattern in the development of the Rhode Island Red was to replace the white with red. Note that in the American Standard of Perfection, it says any bird with a entirely white feather showing in the surface is a disqualification. The second modification was to remove the black pigmentation from all but the wing and tail in the male; and the same for the female with some black ticking remaining at the base of her hackles almost like a necklace. At the end what we have is a Rhode Island Red that has become entirely a rich red with black pigmentation left only in the tail and on one side of the wing feathers and some black ticking remaining at the base of the hens hackles.

I like to think I know a little about the Rhode Island Red

Chris​

 

[Resolution]

I can't say as I know much about the Rhode Island Red! What I have learned recently surprised me, that it was of such exotic origins. It just never occurred to me that it was exotic at all- far from it. I was told that in the beginning it was one creature and later on they improved it by breeding in the additional breeds such as you've suggested regarding the Brown Leghorn. I was discussing the deterioration of breeds and using the Rhode Island Red as an example. Of course there are heirloom lineages of this important heritage breed. It was such a fantastic breed it became an important foundation in so many other breeds- and as you've just educated me here- new strains described with new names! All the same, these strains were developed for and by the commercial and industrial poultry field not the small farmer or backyard hobbyist. The feeds that were developed for these industrial strains are what we are feeding our backyard flocks today. I just hope that heirloom lineages of Rhode Island Red will eclipse the big commercial strains so that serious poultiers will return this breed to its rightful place as the preeminent American chicken! Hatcheries should be giving the consumer the opportunity to select different strains. No?

 

[aveca]

The problem here is, we have agway feed and TSC feed purina and thier store mix...there is a mill in troy Pa that mixes for several horse and chicken breeders, that was how I learned to get away from of the store mix. Farmers freind is not avail at this time and Mazuri..I would really like to buy either. I guess you can see by my pics a page back our chickens do nothing but free roam, you can also see by the surrounding area we are in the forest, lots of buggs and lots of fox, stray cats, coy-dogs and things thast like to eat chickens we lost 2 hens this spring to them , so I have to be out around or playing a radio while they are out. I finnaly got tired of driving 45 mins through snow storms in winter for better feed so started buying the purina and have had nothing but trouble and I dont think it should be that way...

I really hate to be a bummer here but there is no GM modified feed avail with soy in it in america..there is a holdout farm that monsantos is bullying out of bussiness right now..they can outspend these farmers and do, they tie them up in court to the tune of millions that they cannot possibly afford , many of them just drop it and get out of farming... they threaten them, send out agents to warn them they will be prosecuted if they save seeds once they sign those contracts...See Monsantos , harvest of fear.All comes from ConAgra.All feed with soy in it is monsantos soy. Here anyway, some nations have banned GM foods, sadly we are not one of them..all of those soy based foods in your grocery store like fake bacon and hot dogs are the same...I used to think I was doing myself a favor by being on a plant based diet..Till I began deveolping night sweats, and general illness that has cleared up a year after banning myself from those foods. I was better off with a big bag of tater chips. It also triggered Lupus.

 

[Chris09]

Quote:
I think that the Hatcheries need/ should be made to state on the front page that there breeds that they sell are not bred to the American Standard of Perfection and may not be true to form..

I will say that there are very few true Red breeders out there even fewer rose comb Red breeders but the true breed is making a come back slowly.

Chris

 

[Resolution]

Quote:
Farmers Helper is generally carried by Agway you just have to ask them to specifically order if for you. Agway carries other C&S products for wild birds- so they'll just add a few boxes of the Farmers Helper onto the same container that has the wild bird products that go to each Agway every month. Agway didn't carry it here for a few years but after a bunch of people asked for it they do now and in just about every agway I know of in New England.

I asked and C&S does not buy GM grain or soybean meal.

I would suggest you switch over to a scratch grain with no soy naturally and order a bag of UltraKibble directly from the company. One 50 lb bag mixed at 5% into the scratch grain is going to last a very long time. The only other thing you'll have to add is oystershell. This is what some of the larger farms are doing on the east coast and it works wonders. You will only feed about half as much food with this mixture so your savings are in time and in the general health of the birds.