Feed for Chickens

[honeydew]

I have always been of the opinion that a varied diet is good for all - chickens included. We free range them in the summer, but they stay in their coop from say, October to April or May.

Most people I talk to feed their chickens straight wheat for chop. I have tried various mixtures of grains, including wheat & field peas in higher concentrations, and oats and barley in lower concentrations. The idea is I'm trying to get a high protein mix.

The thing is, it seems to me that when we feed them straight wheat, they lay more eggs. Free choice, they will eat the wheat and leave the mix. In defense of my current mix, I must say that it should have a higher protein ratio, normally I would have more peas and less barley in it, but we put in all we could find.

I also have heard somewhere that if you want to hatch out any eggs that you should not feed them any barley at all. Is this true - and why?

I would also like to try less common grains, perhaps amaranth or millet. Something that we can grow ourselves.

We have 19 laying hens and 2 roosters.

Anyone else have experience mixing chop blends, and what seems to work best?

TIA
Marie

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Dec 27, 2010 10:39:36 GMT -5 honeydew said:

I would also like to try less common grains, perhaps amaranth or millet. Something that we can grow ourselves.

Sorghum is easy to grow, harvest, and thresh by hand.

[honeydew]

Do you know how far north it can be grown? I planned to plant a very small amount here this year to see how it did, but I have heard it's not hot for long enough here....

[flowerpower]

I let the chickens free range as long as they can. I watch what they eat out in the field. Their first choice is meat. Meat of any kind. From the smallest gnat to moles and snakes. The birds will fight over meat. I try not to watch. I give them access to commercial layer food all year long. They eat very little in the non-snowy months. It's cold now, so I give corn, sunflower seeds, scratch grains and the cheapest wild bird food I can find. It's full of Sorghum (broomcorn). Plus you can give some of the kitchen scraps.

[mnjrutherford]

Jeepers, Lynn. We've been feeding the grains and layer mash from the start. Plus plenty of table scraps. Are we possibly over feeding? How would we know?

[bluelacedredhead]

Honeydew, why do you not let your birds out in winter? Too far north? You don't have any zone info or indication about where you are in Canada?
Until I raised poultry for exhibition, I didn't worry about the cold. If I opened the door and they rushed outside, I knew it wasn't too cold for them to go out and play.

Black oil sunflower seed is a High protein treat that they really enjoy. It is readily available (feedstore, hardware store, wildbird mixtures at the corner store ). The feed mill I dealt with used B.o.S.S. if it was cheap to buy, if not, they used peanuts in their mix instead. I often grew my own sunflower seeds but never enough for the amount of poultry we housed.

The Barley issue? Never heard that before, but it appears that Carbs from Barley (nor corn) are not digested as well as those from wheat. Mind you the following article also says that wheat isn't utilized as well for young fowl, so age plays a factor as well.
japr.fass.org/cgi/reprint/2/1/68.pdf

I'm sure I've posted this link in the past, but here's a site with a variety of DiY poultry rations.
www.lionsgrip.com/recipes.html
And yes, I fed grains as well table scraps to supplement their free ranging.
Jo, if they are more than pleasingly plump and falling over dead at the feeder then you're over feeding them.

[atash]

I don't know why Barley is not recommended.

Funny we were talking about the very subject of raising chicken-fodder at lunch yesterday.

Chickens do like Sorghum. Millet too which grows quick and tolerates cooler climates than sorghum. Neither is quite balanced in protein and millet is low in protein so it needs to be fortified with other grains.

I think xTriticale is luxurious for chickens but supposedly it's better protein-balanced than most cereals so you don't need as much soy or other high-lysine protein sources to balance it.

Amaranth is a good one. It's small-seeded so unlike soy doesn't need to be cracked for them.

I wonder about plants in the Chenopodaceae family. Some of them are weedy but it seems as though the seeds should be good for chickens. Hence names like "Fat Hen".

[ottawagardener]

Magenta Spreen C. giganteum might be interesting then. The wild birds sure liked it when it was in seed.

[bluelacedredhead]

Dec 29, 2010 12:20:51 GMT -5 atash said:

I don't know why Barley is not recommended.

I was milling this over ;D and it and I wonder if it has to do with the fact that it isn't utilized as well as some other grains, thereby putting on the pounds? Obesity in chickens has the same negative effects on health as in humans.

[bunkie]

would't that be like the corn blue? we are experimenting using scratch, gamebird and COB (dry) this winter for our ducks, till we can grow our own. (COB is corn, oats and barley). they eat it right up. we're using it to give them a little more heft during the winter months for warmth.

[honeydew]

flowerpower - I let mine free range as long as possible too, we have a pretty good dog, but still we lost 4 hens this summer.....last summer we didn't lose any at all. We are in a high predator area.

We used to give them layer's diet but have since moved to a combination of grains. Not only is the feed more costly, our local store quit selling all feed. It is now a minimum 45 minute drive to get feed, but they don't always have the non-medicated.

We don't really produce enough kitchen scraps to satisfy 21 birds.

bluelacedredhead - the reason why we don't is because it is too cold. We are in a zone 2 here. In fact, one night, even with the insulated coop and a lamp, my blue analusian rooster froze part of his um, wattle? the skin that hangs down from his beak. And the tips of his comb. His were extraordinarily large. Poor Grover. We felt so bad for him, now he hangs down a little less.

I would happily grow sunflowers for the girls, and I have plenty of seed and space - how much would I need to grow for 21 birds?

Corn is hard to get locally too. What I am able to get locally, which is my preference, is wheat, peas, oats, barley.

I would also grow various grains for them, I can grow amaranth here, the first summer here I grew it, but we didn't get here until June 10, I wasn't done planting until late June, and it didn't get to seed yet. Mind you we had frost on Aug 29 that year.

I can start anything early in plug trays or soil blocks and plant out if it helps. I just need a transplant stick as to not kill my back again this summer. Mind, I can only do so much with everything else this summer.

atash - I wonder if I can grow sorghum here - I will try anything twice. We have about 90 odd days between frosts here. The last two summers have been so rainy, and cooler, hopefully next summer will be a bit better. I will try millet too, as I know it grows a bit south of here, and amaranth again, quinoa, wheat, peas, hulless oats and barley.

We don't have any threshing equipment.

ottawagardener - this is a relative of quinoa? does it have as long of a growing season, or shorter?


I guess the big question is how much I can grow, and how long it will last my chickens until I can grow more.

[honeydew]

On the subject of corn, I used to give it to them as a treat in the winter to warm them up when I had it. That idea came from a neighboring farmer.

Getting OP corn to mature is a bit of a challenge up here.

[atash]

Honeydew, 90 days between frosts sounds like a short growing season. Mine is around 265 days but rather cool, so I have to multiply days-to-maturity by about 1.5 to compensate.

I'd stick with Millet in a growing season that short. They love it, and Millet is tough. How about the xTriticale? Maybe a short, quick-growing, spring type. How cold are your winters? Do you get snow? They'll need something else too though, something that is not a cereal, and rich in lysine to make up for the deficiency thereof in cereals.

The Magenta spreen Ottawagardener mentioned is a BIG leafy annual, some say from India and some say from Mexico. It grows very fast and might seed for you. Even if it didn't the chickens would probably appreciate the greens. They tend to like that genus. It's a fairly handsome plant too by the way.

Quinoa tolerates a mild frost EXCEPT when it's blooming. It's distant (biologically, not geographically, speaking) cousin C. pallidicuale tolerates MORE frost including when blooming. I would be very interested to hear of your results. We're not sure precisely where quinoa will grow in North America, or, furthermore, what types. We will probably grow out a bunch of varieties and segregate out quick-maturing varieties for shorter growing seasons. We have a long cool growing season to play with, our only huge risk being autumn rain. The seeds sprout within 24 hours of getting wet once fully ripe. = So they absolutely positively need to ripen by late summer.

I should keep chicken-food in mind for cropseed sales. Obviously it's a hot topic. Maybe I should add some sort of designation to crops that chickens are known to thrive on, and look for some crops that are particularly suited to chickens.

[ottawagardener]

Yuko's open pollinated seed - a small seed seller around here sells a chicken mix. I'm not sure what's in (can't remember).

[mjc]

Dec 30, 2010 19:34:33 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

Yuko's open pollinated seed - a small seed seller around here sells a chicken mix. I'm not sure what's in (can't remember).

If it is the same Yuko of Kanoko squash fame, then this is the chicken mix...

570. Yummy Chicken Treat, $1.50
Mix of Amaranth, Chinese Greens, Dill, lettuce and mustard for hard working hens. Of course it’s good for your salad bowl and even for bossy roosters.