Will they starve???

[ldavis916]

I started feeding my 10 month old chickens Scratch and Peck Organic grains...well half wound up on the floor as they were looking for their favorite parts. I switched to organic mash and they ate it but sill most ended up on the ground. THe prissy little things that they are won't eat the food once it is mixed with the pine shavings...unless there are mealworms there. Anyway, I switched again to organic pellets and they won't have anything to do with it. It has been 3 days and they haven't touched it. They get grass, worms and bugs in the yard in the evenings when I let them out but that isn't enough to sustain them. I am still getting eggs. There are 5 chickens and we got 4 eggs today. How long before they waste away to nothing???

 

[Fred's Hens]

Chickens HATE change.

Second, no chicken has ever starved themselves to death, in the presence of feed. Doesn't mean it will ever be their favorite, however. With the high cost of feed and the rodents that wasted feed attracts, we don't allow waste around here.

 

[ChickensRDinos]

Try wetting the pellets and the spilled food to make a bit of a mash. Sometimes it just takes a little bit for them to get used to something new. What kind of feeder do you have? Is it raised? If not I would raise it up to help with some of the spilling.

Feel their crops at bedtime to see if they really have not been eating at all.

 

[BunkyB]

I started a thread a week or so ago about the food wastage on the floor, etc. I experimented with several feeding methods and found the cleanest one for me with less waste on the floor was...

GSW eavestroughing ...the plastic rain gutters on houses. You can cut them to whatever length you want, buy end caps and mounting brackets for a fairly low price. This GSW troughing has an inner lip on both sides that turns down. It really helps and prevents the birds from flinging the food all over the floor. I swear by it.

This makes it so easy for cleaning as well. Take the trough out of the hangers, take off an end cap and slide the unwanted feed into a 5 gallon bucket and store it. Continue this as a routine and you will have enough powdered and unwanted feed in the 5 gallon bucket to make some home made suet for the birds. There are lots of recipes you can make. Just do the Google thing...

PS: I also use full 10 ft. long GSW mounted on the wall for a watering trough for the birds. Sometimes the end caps leak but I use vasoline on the end caps to prevent the leakage. Come cleaning time, remove one end from bracket, pop off end cap and drain the dirty water into a buckey and wipe her clean, then refill. Obviously you can make the trough any length you want to, thus making it easier to dump out the dirty water...

Just a thought for you and full use of a bag of feed with minimal waste... Steve

 

[ldavis916]

Steve...thanks! Do you have a picture of this? They still aren't eating so I wetted the pellets and put them in a bowl and they devoured it! I am not sure that is going to help get them to eat out of their feeders. I might try putting spponfulls of the wetted pellets in the feeder to get them interested.

My feeders are 4" PVC tubes with Y connectors and they eat out of the opening of the Y. There are 3 tubes in their coop and I have 5 chickens now with 2 chicks getting ready to be integrated.

 

[Cheerful]

also loving the trough idea... I'm pretty sure we have a problem with wastage too, and I'd love to tackle it somehow.