All About Chickens

Chickens need proper nutrition. To do this most people feed commercial layers pellets or mash.

There are many different brands of food. In the USA a lot of people use Purina Layena, but here in the UK I use Allen & Page's Smallholder Range Natural Free Range Layers Pellets. 20kg costs me £6.25 from the feed store and lasts my two large fowl hens about two months.

Other people mix their own food but to do this you need to have a feed grinder, a knowledge of what needs to go in and you need to do fairly large amounts to make it viable. It's also time consuming and not really a good option for those with few birds.

Nutritionally speaking, there is no difference between pellets and mash.

Pellets
Pellets are extruded through a tube, and are usually about a centimetre long and 2 millimetres wide. They are marginally more expensive than mash, but they cause less wastage.

As a chicken grows up, their nutritional requirements change.

Chick Crumbs
Hatch to 6 weeks
Some contain a cocciostat, which is a vaccine to prevent your chicks getting coccidosis in later life. However, if you are feeding waterfowl, make sure that you get a cocciostat free feed as it is extremely poisonous to waterfowl. Also, a cocciostat in the chick crumbs will prevent you from legally being able to label your chicken's eggs and meat as organic. Chick crumbs are about the same size as mash, because young chicks can't cope with pellets.

Water must always be availible to hens. If they do not have water then they will not lay eggs, get very adgitated and if they are without water for too long then they will die.

Some people have problems with water freezing. To combat this you can buy water heaters made specifically for the purpose.

Treats should only be given to chickens as a small proportion of their overall diet. They do not provide proper nutrition but are useful for taming them. There are several different treat foods you can give them. Here are some of them:

Grain:
Grain is like smarties for chickens. In other words chickens love them and will eat them until they burst but it has calories and no nutrition so it will make them fat and not lay any eggs. It is tempting to feed them just grain but you will be giving them health problems. The maximum amount that people should give them are as follows:
Standard sized heavy breed (e.g. Sussex, Wyandotte): 25g
Standard sized light breed (e.g. Welsummer, laying hybrid such as ISA brown): 20g
Bantams (e.g. Japanese, Seramas): 15g


Fruit and vegetables:
Fruit and vegetables can be fed to chickens so long as they are not rotten or mouldy. Rotten or mouldy food can kill a chicken quite easily. Fruit and vegetables should always be fed in moderation. Some poisonous foods include:
Avocado
Alfalfa

Porridge:
Porridge oats can be bought very cheaply in small quantities at supermarkets (40p for 500g). Don't feed flavoured varieties, for example Oatso-simple. Chickens should be given the oats in the same amounts as grain. Then it should be mixed with bio-live yoghurt which helps the gut and then warmed. It is a great food for cold winter mornings and although they may be slightly wary at first, one will try it and then they all will. It is good for getting them to put on weight.

Please note that these treats should not be fed all on the same day. They should be fed in moderation, like the way that children should eat sweets.

Grit:
Because hens don't have teeth, they need something to grind up their food. This is where grit comes in. The chickens will eat only as much as they need, which won't be very much. It should be availible ad-lib at all times. All birds need it, which is why we often see pigeons eating the loose stones from a newly re-laid road.

Oyster Shell:
Oyster Shell gives hens the calcium they need to lay eggs with good strong shells. Without it they will lay eggs with either very thin shells or no shells at all. If they do not have oyster shell then they will eventually have very weak bones and eventually die.

Some people say that certain feed supplements have cured some things and have made their flocks performance much better. Here are some of them:

Garlic:
Some people say that garlic boosts the immune system. People have been using it for thousands of years, and there is some evidence there to support it. If you use it then put one or two garlic cloves, unpeeled, uncrushed into the water and leave there until they start to sprout. Make sure there is enough water there at all times.

Diamataceous Earth (DE, Fullers Earth):
DE has been around for thousands of years, and is basically a lot of small micro-organisms that have been crushed together and broken up etc. It works by killing insects by slitting the exoskeleton, eventually causing death through dehydration. However, some people say that it can do much more than that, including killing mites, killing intestinal worms, curing allergies, making egg quality better, better feed conversion, curing various diseases, making for drier feces, limiting smell etc. The supporters of DE say that you should use DE at the rate of 2% of the food, and it can be fed to humans, dogs, cats, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, poultry, guinea pigs, rabbits etc. However this has not been proven by science and many people have achieved the same results by not using DE.

Here is a study done by Frontier Poultry from Backyard Chickens message board.
" I made a statement on a earlier post that I was conducting a 90 day DE study. The purpose of this was to see first hand If DE would have any impact on the overall quality of the egg, production numbers, shell quality, interior quality, etc. Notes were also made on any changes in health and behavior. Prior to the start I had to determine which hens laid which eggs as this would give me the pre test info I needed to track any changes in egg quality. Lots of hours spent reaching under hens to see exactly which hen laid which egg, no trap nests. If a hen laid an egg that had any noticeable exterior flaws she was banded and noted. I also banded four hens that laid consistently small eggs. The records that I kept months prior to the test included, egg production, general egg quality, feed consumption, and heath notes. As a whole I felt that the steps I took to start the test coupled with the info I already had should help me come to a conclusion.

Test included two flocks, 20 each, of Rhode Island Reds of the same strain. Identical housing for each flock. The only difference was flock "one" had 2% DE mixed into their feed. Here is a bullet point summation:
Egg Production: Pre test, flock #1, 84% flock #2 89%
Post test, flock #1 78% flock#2 85%

Exterior Quality: Thin shelled, No change
Ridged shells, No change
Soft shell, 3 hens total no change
Carbon shell, No change
wrinkled shell, 2 hens, improvement
overall texture, smoother
Interior Quality: Meat spots, 2 hens, sporadic, no change
blood spots, no change
All other interior aspects, No change
Overall health: flock #1 a hen became sick with a crop infection on day 37. Crop swollen and distended. Infection due to a puncture from something, I'm not sure. We were not able to determine what the real cause was, wire, straw, staple.....? the hen was culled on day 52 and no replacement was made.
Droppings were much more dry in flock #1 (DE flock). The Consumption of oyster shell that was available to flock #1 did not change and was on par with flock #2 over the 90 day test.

Conclusion: From an economic standpoint DE was of no measurable benefit and in fact was an additional cost to my egg business with no quantitative return. The existing egg quality problems, which included several hens, did not change to the point that justifies the use of DE in the feed in order to improve upon the problem. Flock #1 (DE flock) had no measurable increase in feed conversion which was a hope of mine. The pre existing problems with some of the hens eggs still exists and I will cull those hens. I will continue to use DE as a pest control and dryer (absorbent) as needed around the hen house and gardens.

I post this simply to share the results of "MY" controlled DE test and not to argue the use or non use of DE in hens feed. I did spend many hours, cracked 100's of eggs, and spent a little money in order to come to the conclusion. "

Bio-live Yoghurt:
Some say that bio-live yoghurt has a beneficial effect on the gut both for humans and animals. John Seymour, a now dead farmer who wrote many books on self sufficiency (see links page - recommended reading section) even advocated it's use and he was not one to go along with fads. I feed it mixed with oats to make a porridge/oatmeal mixture.

http://www.grreatideas.com/toxic.html
A great list of toxic plants.

http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/
Another toxic plant list.