Winter Egg laying

[Grandmamoocowchicky]

I want to thank all of you for the advice on helping my chickens lay better through the winter. We have put a light on in the coup, encreased the feed with a 2:1 ratio of corn screenings, make sure they had plenty of fresh water and have been feeding liver and meat scraps. My egg production doubled in a week and today it was 21 degrees. Thank you again.

 

[All about the EGG]

Liver & meat scraps??? What do you do for a living?

 

[Grandmamoocowchicky]

My husband raises beef cattle and most folks don't want the beef liver. We also live in deer hunting country and venison liver is quite easy to come by. This was suggested to me in this forum by several people. They say its the protein. They said to just thaw it out and give it to them raw. They eat every last speck.

 

[ginbart]

Wow, it's deer season here, I think I will ask the man who did our deer to keep them for us. Thanks for the idea.

 

[neblotti]

We process our own deer and the shavings or scraps from the saw are gone shortly after we are done. Our chickens sure clean stuff up. When I clean out their coop I throw it out in a pile and it seems like thay have it all blended into the ground by the end of the week. I only see a little straw laying where the pile was. Chickens sure make clean up easy around the yard

 

[cajunlizz]

Quote:
May I ask how many chickens do you have ? What kind ? and How many eggs WERE you getting before you started using this liver /meat scrap ? AND NOW ?

DH recently added light to both coops and we were picking 3 - 4 eggs a day and yesterday picked OUR 1ST. DOZEN .

How often do you give this liver /meat , and how much ? you also said corn , you mean cracked corn or scratch ?

I feed mine laying pellets and as treats ONLY cracked corn . I was told corn is really not good to give them much of .

 

[Grandmamoocowchicky]

We have about 25 chickens, 12 RIR/Buff Orphington cross, 3 Delawares and the rest are Dominickers and two 3 year old arachanas (oh I have 2 RIR/Buff Orp
roosters). I am only looking at 12 who would be laying, the Delawares and Dominickers, the rest are too young and all my RIR's are moulting. I went from 3-5 eggs a day to 8 to 10. I was getting 15 - 17 eggs before the weather turned but the RIR's weren't all moulting. When it got to freezing the egg production dropped fast.
I also added a light. I feed the meat scraps about 3X's a week. Only a few lbs.. I wish I had more. I don't feed corn in the summer at all, or just what comes with the feed. Corn doesn't have the protein but helps maintain the weight and body heat. My chickens eat more in the winter and we get "corn screenings" (the chaf from farmers who grind their own or process corn for corn burners or to sell shelled. It's like ground corn. The chickens will eat anykind.
It's real hard to find market discard greens anymore. Everything comes in prepackaged but I haven't given up. I love the yolk color that comes from feeding greens.