I feed whole corn in the winter with my layer pellets. I think it helps with the cold weather. When I had bantams I feed crack corn seemed they had a problem with the whole corn but now I keep only standard chickens and I feed whole corn. You have waste with the crack corn I think and the whole corn is better I think. My hens have a pen where they can scratch for grit, if they were confined to a wire pen this might be a problem unless they had grit. I know some feel that corn is not the proper feed for chickens but I use it and my hens love it.
I have bought crack corn that looked like corn meal and sometimes it seemed I got a lot of the cob ground with the corn this bothers me, made me see red but I buy from a place that cracks their own corn and they give me a good price so I just take what I get if every sack was like the corn meal or full of cob I would complain but this didn't happen often.
I have bought scratch which was usually crack corn and milet seed and my hens would eat the corn and leave the milet seed so I think that is a waste.
If I could free range my hens I might feed only corn in the summer month because the hens will get protein from nature. You never have many grass hopper in the summer months if you have hens free rangeing.
Once long ago my husband was out visiting and came home telling me that grass hoppers were eating everthing in all my neighbors garden . I told him my hens would keep the grass hopper population down in my garden and they did. The hens would peck on a few of my tomatoes but that was a small price to pay for insect control.
Since my hens have to be confined to pens because of the dog population where I live now I keep layer pellets in the feeders all the time and throw out some corn in the morning.
