I noticed that one of our professors is listed in the original searches I did on this site for this subject. I'll email him and see if he can shed more light on this topic.
Do you have a working link that has the studies done to back this up? [ a link to a site other than BYC ]
Chris
The phrase "force feeding ...to excess" seems important. Somehow I don't feel tossing a few handfulls into the run is the same. Force feeding water to excess can also be fatal. Should we stop providing water for our chickens as well?
I've fed dry cat food to birds as a conditioning aid for years & know many others who do the same. It has caused no apparent harm.
Do you have a working link that has the studies done to back this up? [ a link to a site other than BYC ]
Chris
The phrase "force feeding ...to excess" seems important. Somehow I don't feel tossing a few handfulls into the run is the same. Force feeding water to excess can also be fatal. Should we stop providing water for our chickens as well?
I've fed dry cat food to birds as a conditioning aid for years & know many others who do the same. It has caused no apparent harm.
Right,
I and a lot of other people have feed cat food as a supplement with no harm.
That post comes up when ever someone asks about feeding cat food.
I feed mine gamebird feed instead of layer and offer oyster shell freechoice on the side. This has worked great for my mixed species/age flock and seems to really help the hens get thru molting faster and in better health the was the case when I was feeding layer.
As far as the great cat food debate goes--I think as with so many things that moderation is the key. I have no scientific studies etc. to back this up, just my own experience. I've never used cat food as a protien boost, mostly because I find the gamebird feed works so well for me, but I have used wet cat food for ill/injured birds who are feeling so poorly that even scrambled eggs don't tempt them.
I'm sure the wet food made the difference between life and death for a rir hen that had problems with cocci after going thru a particularly bad molt (before the gamebird feed) when she was about 18 months old. She scarffed the cat food down like there was no tomorrow and within a few days her strengh and appetite and recoverd to the point that I was able to stop feeding the cat food and she went back to eating her pellets with a scrambled egg mixed in. A week after I thought she was a goner she was back with the flock.
Has anyone done a study on the protien percentage in German roaches, house variety? I seem to have a sudden outbreak of them and wondered if it was advantageous or harmful to feed them to the silkies?
While mine don't seem too excited by BOSS (in the shell), they go nuts if they see the mealworm jar and make a total mess out of yogurt which they really love too. We only have 6 hens, so feeding them eggs is out of the question--they are too precious!
Most of the protein additives are fairly expensive around here ($6.99 for a jar of mealworms), $1 for 12 crickets, $4.99 for plain organic yogurt, so maybe buying eggs isn't a bad choice? 18 eggs for $3.99 at the grocery store...that's a lot of scrambled eggs. I let the hens pick the meal off the turkey bones and they loved that!