Feeding chickens

There are many options for feeding your chickens. For a while we thought the solution was chicken layer pellets, they are uniform, so the chickens don't pick through them, but you never really know what's in them, and they are usually a relatively expensive option.

We then started buying a nice mixed grain produced by our local stock feed store. Unfortunately our chickens are very picky, they don't seem to like wheat or sorghum, so these seeds were picked out while they ate the corn and the sunflowers. Seems like a waste when half the feed ends up on the ground, and just attracts mice. The chickens also tend to leave the fines in the bottom of the feeder, creating even more waste.

Then we decided that if they like corn and sunflowers so much, we should just feed them cracked corn and sunflower seeds. The guy at the stock feed store was worried that this would not be a complete food, however with the chickens free ranging, they should be picking up a lot of what they need out in the paddock, ideally we should only be supplementing the feed that they can find for themselves.

Its quite difficult to find information on chicken feed that's not targeted to industrial producers, or just too vague to make any decisions (like "use a layer mash"). Most industrial advice is about what you can get away with, the main strategy for increasing protein content (and pump out maximum eggs) is to add either animal products or soy. I have also seen a domestic chicken pellet with "yolk pigmenter" included, this is just a food colouring to make the yolks darker - a chicken with a healthy diet should lay eggs with naturally dark yellow yolks.

Cracked corn has a protein content of 6%, and typically an energy content of 13900 kJ/kg. Sunflower seeds can have protein up to 24%, with energy content of 23850 kJ/kg. Sunflower seeds are more expensive that cracked corn, and are deficient in the amino acid lysine, so its good to feed some cracked corn to ensure a balance of amino acids and to reduce feed costs, even though sunflower seeds are the higher energy and protein feed.

From one source I found out that a hen needs about 700 kJ of energy per day to produce eggs and to free-range, and about 18 g/day of protein.  A hen can achieve most of her energy and protein needs just from eating cracked corn (about 300g per hen per day), but by adding sunflowers to the diet, the total feed requirement reduces. For example feeding 50/50 cracked corn and sunflowers reduces the feed requirements to about 120g per hen per day. The ideal ratio depends on the price of sunflower seeds relative to cracked corn. The more sunflower seeds consumed, the less overall feed and overall energy needs to be consumed to achieve enough protein, so I think we should feed as much sunflower seeds as we can afford. This system resulted in much less food wasted, so even though buying cracked corn is more expensive than mixed grain, it worked out cheaper as we don't have to use as many bags per week.

Lately we have come to an even simpler system in which we feed the chickens the same milled grain as the cattle. That way we only have to keep one type of feed in storage and its suitable for all the animals. The grain is milled to a size where the chickens can’t really pick through and chose their favourite grains. Also any food spilt is safe for the cattle to eat when the chicken tractor is moved over. We still feed sunflower seeds as a treat in the afternoon, I don’t think we could stop even if we wanted to, as you just about can’t walk to the feed bins without being mobbed by a gang of chickens waiting for their afternoon treats. We store the milled grain in 200 L metal drums, with a layer of diatomaceous earth to keep the insects out. This is also safe for the animals to eat.

Ideally, the grain should just be a supplement to all the food that the chickens can find while free-ranging. They eat grass, weeds and any bugs that they find. We also grow a few bugs for treats and to feed to baby chicks. Eventually I would like to grow all the chicken feed and not have to buy grain at all.

Chickens need to eat some form of living protein because they need the amino acid methionine, which is not found in significant proportions in grains or legumes. The theory is that chickens are descended from naturally free-ranging jungle-dwelling birds (gallus gallus), which tend to get their protein from bugs. It is argued that a chicken free-ranging on pasture does not pick up as many bugs as a bird living in the jungle might, and therefore does not get enough protein from bugs, and so needs to be fed a "complete ration" containing either meat meal or a synthetic form of methionine. In addition, while gallus gallus lays only a few eggs per year, our modern hens lay close to one per day and have higher protein requirements.

Mealworms are one source of protein that you can grow for your chickens. Mealworms live in grain (which doesn’t quite help us to avoid grain, but they don’t need much). Mealworms convert that grain to higher protein feed just by feeding and growing, so its a way to increase the nutritional value of the grain. They also need the occasional carrot or apple to provide moisture, just replace it when its all eaten or gone mouldy. Compost worms are another option, especially if you are keeping a worm farm anyway, its very easy to dig around in the worm farm and grab a few worms for the chickens. Black Soldier Fly larvae are another option that can be set up around the chicken tractors as self-serve protein systems. I can’t get into the detail here, but there is plenty of information on the net about all of these options. Harvey Ussery also suggests in his book that you could hang a bucket of roadkill meat in the chicken coop and let the maggots fall out to feed the chickens! He calls it free-food from thin-air. There are certainly some clever ideas out there and we do not need to be constrained to buying expensive bags of feed from the produce store.

What do you feed your chickens?  Any clever ideas for free chicken food?

Raising chicks in a chicken tractor

The chicks have grown enough to move out into a chicken tractor. Here's some thoughts from the books about feeding the chicks and their first few nights in the chicken tractor:

Feeding chicks

There are a few options for feeding the chicks. You can just buy a commercial chick starter crumble, which is formulated for chicks, and usually contains a coccidiostat (an antibiotic to prevent the chicks getting sick from coccidiosis). This is more relevant for large-scale production of chicks and probably unnecessary if you’re only raising a few chicks. A good alternative, if you can find it, is an organic chick crumble which contains all the same protein and minerals as the commercial crumble, without the medication.

Now you may want to take things even further and make the chick feed yourself. We have experimented with a few options and found that we can use hammer-milled grain (that we also feed to our adult chickens) supplemented with extra protein and minerals. The extra protein can be in the form of meal worms, compost worms, meat meal mix (available from our local produce store) and hardboiled eggs. It sounds weird to feed eggs to chickens, but the egg was the chick’s first food as it developed, and as long as its crushed they won’t associate a raw egg with food in the future. This is the easiest and cheapest supplement if you already have some laying hens. For the minerals we buy a commercial organic mineral mix and a seaweed meal.

You can also start feeding the chicks leafy greens and grass, they might not eat much at first, but it gives them something different to peck at in their box. When the chicks are a few weeks old, we also start putting them outside in a small birdcage for a few hours to that they can experience being on the grass, then its not such a shock for them when they move into a chicken tractor.

I’m not sure if this really necessary, but we usually “teach” the chicks to eat their food by tapping a finger in the food dish. This results in lots of chicks running over to your hand to see what you’re doing and a few will then try eating the food. After that, they are usually pretty quick to work out where the food is.

Moving chicks into a chicken tractor
The transition from the chicks living in the brooder box to moving into chicken tractors can be difficult to time, as it depends on your outside overnight temperatures. Ideally we hatch the chicks in spring or summer, so that they can move out after only 6 weeks, before they have all their feathers, because it is usually plenty warm enough by then. Otherwise they have to stay in their brooder box longer and once they reach that noisy messy stage I can't wait for them to move out!

Even though it is warm enough, we find that when we put chicks out in the tractor for the first few nights they need to 'tucked in' at dusk because they are so used to living in a box and not having open sides, its quite scary for them. This means draping tarps, old sheets, towels and blankets over the tractor so that they feel like they're still in a solid box. Otherwise they spend the night trying to stick their little heads out of the mesh and sometimes they manage to squeeze out. We only have to do this for about a week until they get used to it. This also helps to keep the dew off their grass and keep out any draughts, while they acclimatise to not having the heat lamp above them at night.