When to stop feeding eggs

[K0k0shka]

I think my boyfriend's concern is that the dry feed only has 3 main ingredients which seems limited when you think about what most birds eat naturally.

What are you feeding them that it only contains 3 ingredients? That seems highly sketchy and insufficient. If you are feeding them a complete and balanced commercial feed, it would have a lot more than 3 ingredients to ensure that all of their nutritional needs are met. And if you are not feeding them a complete commercial feed, you need to really know what you're doing in order to get the right balance, and even then, you may not get it right. Mixing your own feed is very hard to do right and usually not worth the effort and expense.

Here's the ingredients list for one of the more popular feeds, Purina Flock Raiser (the one I use). A lot more than 3. The chickens don't need anything else besides this (other than calcium).

 

[arazla]

Not feeding them a balanced diet will cause problems soon and you will end up with sick and dead young hens.

Feeding treats daily in large amounts, which means more than one tablespoon worth per ADULT bird, will cause problems like these:


https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poul...e/fatty-liver-hemorrhagic-syndrome-in-poultry

And worse than are thng like these, where the poor birds suffer to death:

1. https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poul...eproductive-system/egg-peritonitis-in-poultry

2. https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poul...tem/egg-bound-or-impacted-oviducts-in-poultry


Feed them an age appropriate commercially made crumble or pelleted feed and you will birds will be healthier and happier.

Yikes, those are some scary conditions for sure! We don't want that I guess the concern is finding a feed that is truly balanced. Our current feed has only THREE ingredients. Plus tons of added minerals and vitamins. Can that really be enough? I've read that free ranging chickens even eat small frogs and mice. We will let our chickens out into a run, but don't plan to free range because there are so many predators in our area. So their access to a wide variety of food sources in nature may be somewhat limited. I am a bit skeptical as to whether additives can substitute for the real thing. So many human products claimed to be part of a nutritious diet that were just not. I made this point in another thread, but for example, I grew up hearing that Kellogg's Special 19 had all the vitamins and iron we needed. Imagine if we had eaten that almost exclusively. Lots of human watchdog agencies and it still took a long time for them to change their wording. Hopefully there is similar oversight for livestock. I'm new to all this.

 

[arazla]

What are you feeding them that it only contains 3 ingredients? That seems highly sketchy and insufficient. If you are feeding them a complete and balanced commercial feed, it would have a lot more than 3 ingredients to ensure that all of their nutritional needs are met. And if you are not feeding them a complete commercial feed, you need to really know what you're doing in order to get the right balance, and even then, you may not get it right. Mixing your own feed is very hard to do right and usually not worth the effort and expense.

Here's the ingredients list for one of the more popular feeds, Purina Flock Raiser (the one I use). A lot more than 3. The chickens don't need anything else besides this (other than calcium).

View attachment 3502269

Okay, I think I was misleading/confusing. By 3 ingredients, I meant 3 actual foods. Corn, soybeans and wheat. The rest were all supplements. Maybe they're all absorbed fully, but I expected a wider mix of grains or seeds if that's their staple for life.

 

[arazla]

Yikes, those are some scary conditions for sure! We don't want that I guess the concern is finding a feed that is truly balanced. Our current feed has only THREE ingredients. Plus tons of added minerals and vitamins. Can that really be enough? I've read that free ranging chickens even eat small frogs and mice. We will let our chickens out into a run, but don't plan to free range because there are so many predators in our area. So their access to a wide variety of food sources in nature may be somewhat limited. I am a bit skeptical as to whether additives can substitute for the real thing. So many human products claimed to be part of a nutritious diet that were just not. I made this point in another thread, but for example, I grew up hearing that Kellogg's Special 19 had all the vitamins and iron we needed. Imagine if we had eaten that almost exclusively. Lots of human watchdog agencies and it still took into human foods from time to time...I hope.

CORRECTION: I see I was confusing, by ingredients I meant whole foods, not all the additives.

 

[NatJ]

Okay, I think I was misleading/confusing. By 3 ingredients, I meant 3 actual foods. Corn, soybeans and wheat. The rest were all supplements. Maybe they're all absorbed fully, but I expected a wider mix of grains or seeds if that's their staple for life.

That depends on what you consider a "supplement."

For example, I am confident salt is on that list. Chickens need a certain amount of salt, but the amount is small, so it is way down the list of ingredients. If you are feeding layer feed, it will have a calcium source (oyster shell, or "calcium carbonate," or something like that), but again the amount is small so it will be quite a ways down the list.

Corn and soybeans together can provide the vast majority of what a chicken needs: enough protein, an appropriate set of amino acids within that protein, enough calories for energy, and I believe also an amount of fiber that is appropriate for chickens. The rest of what they need really is small amounts.

I am a bit skeptical as to whether additives can substitute for the real thing.

With chickens, it get tested a lot better than with humans.

People really do put thousands of chickens in cages or a big barn, and feed them nothing else, and pay attention to whether the chickens show symptoms of deficiency.

For humans, scientists usually figure out what is "needed" by looking for symptoms of problems, and asking what the people eat, then making a guess and trying something. Because the people are almost always free to eat other things, this is less accurate than making a supposedly-complete diet and watching what happens when the animal eats nothing else for its entire life.

There are many chickens, in both commercial flocks and some backyard flocks, that eat NOTHING but the commercially-available feed, and do just fine. @Kiki is strongly in favor of that method, and gets very good results with their chickens.

(It is also true that there are many healthy flocks who eat a more varied diet. I'm not saying commercial feed is the only way to have a healthy flock, just saying it is one way that does work and is quite well tested.)

 

[NatJ]

That's interesting about meat scraps. When you say dry and stable, would that be like beef Jerkey?

I think so. I have never seen it for myself, just read about it.

 

[K0k0shka]

By 3 ingredients, I meant 3 actual foods. Corn, soybeans and wheat. The rest were all supplements. Maybe they're all absorbed fully, but I expected a wider mix of grains or seeds if that's their staple for life.

I see I was confusing, by ingredients I meant whole foods, not all the additives.

Everything that's in there is an ingredient. No need to look down on the supplements as somehow inferior. The whole mix is a complete package and needs to be looked at as a whole in itself, without teasing apart all the different elements and judging them on their realness. The days of chickens happily foraging in the wild and eating "real" food are long gone. The vast majority of chickens in this country live their lives in some form of human-made containment, whether that's large scale commercial facilities or somebody's backyard coop/run, and they just don't have access to all the different foods that would together meet all their needs. Very very few chickens forage exclusively for their full nutrition, or have personal chefs who pick out only "whole" foods for them. Even if you were to make your own feed from scratch, you'd have to lean on some supplements to get all the necessary micronutrients. Modern science has taken that off your shoulders and provided a truly complete feed that needs nothing else, and yeah, to get to that completeness, it needs some supplements for the harder to source micronutrients. The chickens of the past who got by on trash and scraps by the roadside didn't have all that, but they also didn't live very long, and weren't bred to produce the unnatural amount of eggs modern chickens pump out. The demands on their bodies have changed, and our expectations of their lifespans have changed. So they need better feed to meet those expectations.

 

[Ridgerunner]

That's interesting about meat scraps. When you say dry and stable, would that be like beef Jerkey?

I've read that free ranging chickens even eat small frogs and mice.

Beef jerky might be a bit salty but in small quantities should be safe. A lot of salt is not good for them.

Meat does not have to be dry and stable. I assume stable means it won't quickly spoil. When I trap a mouse, I feed it fresh and whole (but dead) to the adult chickens. They play keep away with it and peck it until it is flexible enough that one of them can swallow it. I've seen them cut a frog to pieces with their beak by pecking to get it to bite sized pieces. I've seen them swallow small snakes, maybe 6" long, after pecking it to death.

When I kill certain small animals like rats, possum, and raccoons I put them in the run and cut them open so the chickens can get to the insides. Before dark I dispose of what is left so I don't attract other predators. With chickens it's do lunch or be lunch. If it doesn't eat them they will eat it.

Chickens are omnivores. If given the chance they will eat veggies or meat. There doesn't have to be anything special about it.

If you have sufficient quality and quantity of forage chickens can pretty much feed themselves in the good weather months. Chickens have been raised that way for thousands of years and are being raised that way now in every country in the world. When given the right quality and quantity they can manage a balanced diet on their own. But almost none of us on this forum have that available so we have to use a chicken feed. Chicken feed (not scratch) from reputable suppliers is a balanced diet. It supplies all they need in the right amounts. As a rule of thumb as long as that feed is 90% of their daily diet you can feed them other things without upsetting that balanced diet. Feeding them a bit more of the other stuff won't kill them or be that unhealthy as long as you don't get ridiculous, but it is not quite as balanced as it could be.

 

[NatJ]

Meat does not have to be dry and stable. I assume stable means it won't quickly spoil.

In context of old recipes that call for "beef scrap" or "meat scrap," they were talking about a product that was sold at the time, that was dry and stable (no refrigeration needed, easy to transport, did not spoil quickly, could be mixed into a dry ration without making a gooey mess.) I think it must have been similar to jerky, but in small pieces and without the salt.

In context of what is good food for chickens, I agree that meat in plenty of other forms is also fine (like your raw mouse example, or feeding cooked meat left over from human meals. Depending on how salty the human leftovers are, they may need to be limited for that reason.)

 

[arazla]

Beef jerky might be a bit salty but in small quantities should be safe. A lot of salt is not good for them.

Meat does not have to be dry and stable. I assume stable means it won't quickly spoil. When I trap a mouse, I feed it fresh and whole (but dead) to the adult chickens. They play keep away with it and peck it until it is flexible enough that one of them can swallow it. I've seen them cut a frog to pieces with their beak by pecking to get it to bite sized pieces. I've seen them swallow small snakes, maybe 6" long, after pecking it to death.

When I kill certain small animals like rats, possum, and raccoons I put them in the run and cut them open so the chickens can get to the insides. Before dark I dispose of what is left so I don't attract other predators. With chickens it's do lunch or be lunch. If it doesn't eat them they will eat it.

Chickens are omnivores. If given the chance they will eat veggies or meat. There doesn't have to be anything special about it.

If you have sufficient quality and quantity of forage chickens can pretty much feed themselves in the good weather months. Chickens have been raised that way for thousands of years and are being raised that way now in every country in the world. When given the right quality and quantity they can manage a balanced diet on their own. But almost none of us on this forum have that available so we have to use a chicken feed. Chicken feed (not scratch) from reputable suppliers is a balanced diet. It supplies all they need in the right amounts. As a rule of thumb as long as that feed is 90% of their daily diet you can feed them other things without upsetting that balanced diet. Feeding them a bit more of the other stuff won't kill them or be that unhealthy as long as you don't get ridiculous, but it is not quite as balanced as it could be