Why do my chickens do this???

[Chicka_deee]

I have on of the hanging metal feeders for chicken feed I I hung it up the the chicken’s coop—yet the girls do something weird....

They don’t eat the food from the top, yet from where they usually are supposed to eat but I fill it up for the day full and then come back and half of it is on the floor. I have observed them and noticed they take their beaks from where they eat and where the food sits and knocks big handfuls of food with their beaks onto the floor.

How do I stop them from doing this???

Why do they do this???

 

[Granny Hatchet]

what are you feeding ?

 

[crazy4ChickensNducks]

They are chickens it’s just what they do!

 

[A_Fowl_Guy]

what are you feeding ?

I agree with this question: what is your feed? Are you mixing scratch in the feed? If so they are scratching to get to the good morsels. If not then they are scratching to scratch.

 

[Chicka_deee]

There is no scratch... we use chicken crumbles chicken feed

 

[A_Fowl_Guy]

There is no scratch... we use chicken crumbles chicken feed

Then they are just scratching out of boredom.

 

[Granny Hatchet]

Boredom maybe then. You can try raising the feeder up a little higher level w/ their backs if its not already and give them something else to scratch in. A small sandbox, head of cabbage hanging , ect...

 

[IamRainey]

It's called "billing out". It's just a chicken behavior.

 

[21hens-incharge]

A lot of birds will "Bill out". It can be very frustrating.

Search "no waste feeder" to see how many others have dealt with it.

I have found that with certain brands of feed mine bill out. I switched to pellets and keep the feeder at chest level on the birds.

You might find feeding a wet feed less wasteful.

I have a cross beaked bird so I do wet feed every day as well as keeping dry available.

Wet feed is simple, just their dry feed with enough water to make it the consistency of thick oatmeal. It takes about ten minutes for the dry feed to absorb the water.

 

[Chicka_deee]

I’ll try wet feed! Thx for the information!