How to Keep Your Chooks Happy and Well Fed

Feeding chooks isn’t difficult, but there is some basic rules to remember

Chickens, like everything, love their food. If you have hungry chickens and you feed them in the evening they will climb all over each other to get to the food.

Feeding chickens is relatively simple, however it’s still important to understand some basic principles.

At different stages of life chooks need different nutrients. Young birds, for example, need different nutrients to laying hens.

Fortunately there are commercial feeds available at cater to the different demands of birds at different ages. Grow pellets are intended for younger birds whilst layers palettes are intended for laying hens. Chickens are started on chick crumble.

It’s important to make sure you’re using the correct commercial free for birds of the correct age. If you use layers pellets for young birds the calcium content is too high and this is not good for them.

And if you use growers pellets for laying hens the calcium content is too low. Laying hens require a higher level of calcium to help form the eggs.

However commercial pellets can become expensive, and you can supplement your chicken’s diet yourself. There is no reason why you cannot feed your birds with vegetable and table scraps for example, as long as this is not their only feed.

I personally prefer to have itemised the table scraps and to add pollard to make a good consistency. My chooks love this mash and I feed this in conjunction with commercial pellets.

You can also feed grass clippings to hens, surprisingly they will eat grass and love it. Not only that but grass has omega 3 fats and this will increase the omega 3 content of your eggs. However don’t feed too much grass.

Remember however that you should not feed meat or chicken to your chooks to combat the spread of disease.

Get it right and your chickens will provide you with lovely eggs, get it wrong and you won’t get any eggs. It is not difficult to do, concentrate on a daily supply of commercial feed, supplement with some table scraps of your own and a little grass and you’ll have happy laying hens.

Tagged with: chicken food • chook food • feeding chickens • feeding chooks

Filed under: Feeding Chickens

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!