Poultry Feed & Care
Poultry Feed
What to feed your chickens!?
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An amazing topic of endless possibilities! I will share with you what I have found works personally best for our own birds throughout the years of trial and error. Then maybe it will help you in making better decisions for your own flock.
Sourcing feed before getting birds and doing research is key to success!
We have found and work with a distributor of Alberta grains now for the last couple years which has been fantastic in consistency. Buying bulk is most cost efficient depending on the scale of your bird operation. Feed is usually packaged in 50lbs bags. Quality is very important, obviously! You want your birds to get the most out of what your giving them to ensure optimal health. Along with grains, like wheat, barley, and oats, you should add some source of Calcium, such as Oyster Shells or Calcium Carbonate and grit to their diet. What is grit? Grit are tiny rocks that help grind and digest their food properly. Oyster shells or calcium substitute are an essential part of the development of the egg. We mix all these goodies together into our large homemade feeders.
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Chickens are omnivores by nature. Meaning they will certainly eat meat and other ewe things. Save your food scraps from meals, throw them to the chickens! It's their favorite part of the day!
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Sunflower seeds, lettuce, meal worms, are just a couple of examples of the many different things you can add to their diet.
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DIY (Do It Yourself!) Home made feeders.
I took a regular size garbage can (you can pick any size) and 4 pvc elbow pipes 3"- 4" diameter (want the chickens big heads to fit in and see the food) traced the size with pencil onto the garbage can. Drilled holes in all 4 spots to fit the cutting blade in. I used a rotary tool to cut the circles out. Then I pushed the elbows in the holes so they fit nice and snuggly. You want the elbows facing down evenly roughly 4"-6" off the bottom of the can so the feed can fall into the opening. Using extra strength gorilla glue, glued all the elbows in place. (a couple days depending on the weather/ ambient conditions for dry time) Then for extra measure once dried into place, I sprayed the outside with weather sealant to keep from erosion or the chickens pecking at the glue.
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This keeps the chickens from spreading feed all over the ground (because we all know how much we love watching them waste our money away! haha!) and keeps the pests like mice out of the feed. Also keeps it dry, easy for distribution, and you don't have to feed every couple days. I have 2-3 of these in my largest part of the coop for 50+ birds and fill once every 2 weeks give or take. Also makes it easy to mix the feed how I need to.
What else can you feed chickens?
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I save all my eggs shells! I have a large bucket on the counter where we put our egg shells in to dry out, then they make their way to a larger bucket outside where I pound it all up into tiny pieces. Then its easy to mix into the food to feed back to the birds. It is that simple!
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Did you know chickens are Omnivores? Meaning they eat everything, meat, carcasses, bugs, grass, grains, etc. Do you want to encourage large amounts of meat eating? Probably not, could possibly lead to cannibalism, but to say the least, it wont hurt them and not to be surprised if you see behavior's like that. With that being said, absolutely nothing goes to waste in our house! We have a designated "chicken bucket" were all the table scraps go. Having young children, going through their stages of picky eating, leads to more waste than appreciated at times. Our birds can see that bucket coming a mile away and its clearly their favorite part of the day! haha!
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We are grateful to be apart of what is call the "Loop" Program. Learn more about it here: https://loopresource.ca/
Once every 2 weeks we get to pick up a large amount of food from the local grocery store that is no longer safe for human consumption. This is an amazing program and so fun to watch all our animals benefit from the goodies they get to eat! Chickens absolute favorite is probably the lettuce and watermelons!
I pre mix my oyster shell, calcium carbonate, egg shells & grit in a bucket to easily add to my larger feeders as I need.
What other kinds of feed can you offer your birds?
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Fermented feeds - What is fermented feed?
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THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION! :)