Many Chicken Questions

[paddy]

Layers pellets....ok but what did egg layers get before they were invented??

What is an egg layers natural food???

Can you feed Oats and Barley to your chickens crushed or rolled and what is the advantages or disadvantages of doing so????

How old will a chicken be from hatching to egg producing age????

How much in monetary terms will that chicken have eaten in that time???

How old will a chicken bred for meat be at killing age if fed on grain???

How much in monetary terms will that chicken have eaten in that time????

Does anybody here grow food for their chickens and if you do what do you grow??? and i dont mean a few left over veg.

How long do you leave your chickens on one patch of ground before you move them to clean ground?????

Thankyou

[SueSteve]

Hmm, a lot of questions!!
Heres some more!!!
Can I give chickens water out of the water butt, or is it best from the tap?
Where can I buy Organic feed, its £10 for 20KG from omlet, but £7 postage!!!

I'm hoping to order 4 gingernuts and an Eglu cube next month!
Thanks,
Sue

[paddy]

Where can I buy Organic feed, its £10 for 20KG from omlet, but £7 postage
Thanks,
Sue

Or would she be better off buying a sack of organic grain????

I understand a " feed" may be a balanced diet but if they are outside scratching around will they get their balanced diet from this with the grain aswell??????

[farmerdrea]

Hi -- I will try to answer some of your questions based on 20 years of poultry rearing, including 3 of those years doing meat birds commercially (organically, but on a very small scale).

Layers pellets....ok but what did egg layers get before they were invented??

Greens. Grass especially. They also need a balance of protein, which can come from the grains to some extent, but also from all those bugs they find. They are omnivorous, and not beyond cannibalism if need be. I doubt poultry of "old", as in the days before commercial breeds and feed to match the output, would have been as prolific as they are now.

What is an egg layers natural food???

As above.

Can you feed Oats and Barley to your chickens crushed or rolled and what is the advantages or disadvantages of doing so????

Poultry can utilise whole grains far better than monogastrics or ruminants, because of their crops (the bulgy bit at beginning of their digestive systems). The crop is usually 1/4 full of little stones which help to crush anything they eat, so they have a built in grain crusher. However, rolled or crushed grains, as long as they are freshly done - most grains lose about half their available nutrition within 1-2 weeks of the outer shell bring broken - are better is you want to maximise what you want to get out of them.

How old will a chicken be from hatching to egg producing age????

This depends on the breed, but if it's one of the commercial laying breeds (all hybrids), they begin to lay around 16 weeks. Heritage breeds begin much later, around 22-24 weeks. Commercial breeds are built to be laying machines. By the time they're 18 months old, they are pretty well spent, and in a commercial egg producing facility, at least here, they are culled at about 15 months of age. They can continue to lay for 2-3 years, but not for as many months of the year, and as they get older, not every day. Heritage types can be laying many years later; I've had some bantam crosses lay for 12 years, 2-3 eggs a week. They were pets.

How much in monetary terms will that chicken have eaten in that time???

This all depends on how much you pay for feed. Where we were raising the meat birds, we had access to certified organic feed for $8/25kgs - we were in the states at the time, in an area where lots of organic grains were grown. There is a formula used to figure out production costs, but I can't find it. I'm sure if you google, you'll find it.

How old will a chicken bred for meat be at killing age if fed on grain???

The meat breeds are usually killed between 3 and 8 weeks of age, depending on where the meat is going (restaurants have different needs to the average grocery shopper). They are made to bulk up very quickly, heavy on the breast meat, thank you, and beyond a certain point, they can barely stand up. We killed ours at 8 weeks, opting to stop feeding the growers ration, preferring to free range them on a meadow with access to all kinds of shrubs and vines under which to scratch, and fed them whole grains.

How much in monetary terms will that chicken have eaten in that time????

Again, it depends on what you pay for your feed and how you manage them. We saved about 25% using the above method (I forgot to mention we fed the grower feed for 4 weeks, then switched to whole grains - they were housed indoors for the first 4 weeks, just to keep them warm).

Does anybody here grow food for their chickens and if you do what do you grow??? and i dont mean a few left over veg.

Not intentionally, but there's grass, grass, grass as far as the eye can see here (we bought an old calf-rearing property, so there's lots of grass and shrubs and mature trees under which our poultry can scratch). They're mostly free ranging.

How long do you leave your chickens on one patch of ground before you move them to clean ground?????

This would depend on how many birds you have in how much space. When we do have birds confined, like I do in a small ark for the purpose of tidying up in the vege patch, I put 6 hens in an ark of 4 feet by 6 feet and move them every third or 4th day. But I want them to really work on ripping up the weeds and the top layer of soil, otherwise I'd probably move them every other day.

Hope this helps!
Andrea
NZ

[farmerdrea]

Hmm, a lot of questions!!
Heres some more!!!
Can I give chickens water out of the water butt, or is it best from the tap?
Where can I buy Organic feed, its £10 for 20KG from omlet, but £7 postage!!!

I'm hoping to order 4 gingernuts and an Eglu cube next month!
Thanks,
Sue

We provide fresh water to all the poultry, every day, sometimes twice a day as needed. However, they more often choose to find a really muddy puddle to drink out of, even if it's right next to their waterers! I imagine your water butt water is fine.

Cheers
Andrea
NZ

[paddy]

Andrea many thanks for you answers above but could please ask another question..........

Roughly how much egg production and meat production would i lose if i were to feed my birds grain and free range outside naturally with added waste veg thrown in............meaning i dont use layers pellets or growers ration............would it be a huge loss or maybe something like 10%.?????

[Martin]

good advice from Farmerdrea!
Put your accountant's head on, and ask yourself the question "would farmers feed highly expensive feed if cheaper ones would do the job.........."

[Martin]

and to anyone thinking of wasting good money on one of those superannuated washing up bowls (eegloos or whatever) - get some old pallets, felt, nails and chicken wire, and build them a palace for peanuts!

[farmerdrea]

Paddy, to answer your last question, again, it all depends on your costs. I couldn't do it on a small scale and be profitable here in New Zealand, because the processing costs (which in the states you can do yourself if you stay under a certain number of birds) are so high. The cost of organic feed here is also very high, more than 4 times higher here than in the states. I could never do it on the small scale I'd like and make any kind of profit much less remain solvent!

Commercial growers feed a high quality, balanced feed for a very short time to be able to have kills at younger ages with larger birds. It's rather sad, really. If I were you, I'd experiment with a couple of small lots of birds, perhaps 6 in each group - one raised using a commercial model: housed under lights, fed a grower ration; a second group raised outdoors (once they are old enough, unless you build a small brooder in their enclosure - we would keep ours in the basement under heat lamps till they were a week old, and we got them as day-old, straight from the hatchery), free ranged, fed scraps, grains, etc.

You can weigh them each once a week, compare growth rates and kill them at fixed weight. Or, you could just decide to kill each group at a certain set age, and compare dressed weights then. THEN, do a blind taste test. One group will certainly stand out!

We actually did this with some friends of ours, they raised one group - larger though, 30 birds each group - and we raised the other.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get on!



Cheers
Andrea
NZ

[paddy]

good advice from Farmerdrea!
Put your accountant's head on, and ask yourself the question "would farmers feed highly expensive feed if cheaper ones would do the job.........."

Martin i am not asking for that reason i am just not interested in feeding processed feed that's all and was simply wondering how much if any production would i lose if i fed them nutritional natural food.

Thanks again Andrea.

[Millymollymandy]

My hens are currently drinking water butt water but that's because it has rained a lot up until the beginning of this month. As soon as the water butt water starts going green due to the sunlight I will give them tap water.

I have 5 hens and change their run (about 30m2) every week because they trample the grass down. By this time the grass in the other run has recovered/grown. I poo pick their run every day.

[red]

get some old pallets, felt, nails and chicken wire, and build them a palace for peanuts!

thats funny - you have just described our new hen house... well its part old shed... a lot pallet...

[red]

I poo pick their run every day.

you pick up their poo every day? why?

[possum]

I poo pick their run every day.

you pick up their poo every day? why?

I wondered that as well, surely it is best left on the ground.

Ours are completely free range, we did pen them in to begin with, but as there are no predators here, we stopped doing it. The only down side to them being free range is that they shit all over the back deck (soon to re use their mesh from their pen to keep them off it though).

[Millymollymandy]

I poo pick because they crap so much the grass gets covered and they eat grass. Maybe this is why their runs have grass in them unlike all the ones I see here which are just bare earth and not even a weed. Anyway I want it in the compost bins and the thought of squelching through more than a few days worth of chook poo even in my wellies doesn't bear thinking about!