Chickens store shell grit in their gizzards to help pulverize tougher, rougher foods such as pellets and poultry scratch grains more effectively. Hens that don’t receive enough grit may end up producing eggs with weak or misshapen shells resulting in weakening shells or disfiguration.
Pellets are compact cylinders of chicken feed designed to maintain their shape even if your flock accidentally knocks over their feeder. Some coop owners prefer them because they are spill-proof and less wasteful.
Contents
Laying Mash
This mash is specially tailored for egg laying chickens and contains protein, calcium and other important nutrients necessary for optimal flock development and healthy eggs.
Hens are known to appreciate receiving kitchen scraps, bugs and garden greens to supplement their feed, providing your flock with an optimal balanced diet. Doing this along with commercial mash, crumble or pellets can give your flock what it needs for optimal health.
Mash feed is a mix of ingredients combined in an open hopper to make an easily customized diet for backyard chicken owners. Mash can include cracked corn, soybean meal, wheat bran, calcium carbonate, cane molasses, sunflower seed oil, flax seed, suncured alfalfa meal, rock phosphate and oyster shell as well as additional vitamins and minerals such as mono dicalcium phosphate, vitamin A acetate ferrous sulfate zinc oxide; cod liver oil or pilchard oil may also enhance its composition.
Layer Mash
Layer mash feed provides adult chickens with all the nutritional needs that are met by pelleted feed, but with additional advantages of being cheaper to produce and digest for laying hens as well as better control over quality of ingredients.
Protein sources found in mash feed are generally cooked by-products from meat processing, including fish meal, blood meal and carcass meals. While these tend to have high protein levels but also carry significant fat levels; sunflower seed meal is an alternative energy source with lower fatty contents.
Vitamins and minerals must be included in mash to ensure your chickens receive all of the nutrition they require to thrive. Commercially prepared vitamin and mineral premixes or home-made supplemental blends of vitamins, minerals, and trace nutrients may be used; alternatively homemade combinations of vitamins, minerals, trace nutrients can also be created. Fish oils provide additional sources of Vitamin A and D when green pasture or direct sunshine is unavailable; while calcium can also be included either through crushed oyster shells or dried eggshells.
Broiler Mash
Broiler mash is a nutritionally complete feed for chicks that includes crushed grains mixed with protein meal and supplements such as vitamins and minerals. It is one of the most popular forms of home-mixed chicken food available at farm stores or home poultry supply outlets.
When using a mash diet, the ingredients become separated according to particle size; larger particles are consumed first while smaller ones may be rejected by chicks, creating an uneven and sometimes difficult-for-chickens to digest diet. It also produces the highest volume of feed dust; an unnecessary waste of nutrients which the chicks cannot consume and which may cause respiratory irritation in later life.
Pelletizing involves combining grain ingredients using heat, steam and pressure into pellets of uniform size, shape and texture that are more easily consumed by animals than mash diets. According to one recent study conducted with laying hens using pelleted feed diets produced greater weight gain and FCR rates compared with using mash diets alone. [14]
Breeder Mash
A mash is composed of crushed whole grains blended with protein meal and various supplements of vitamins and minerals, often moistened before feeding to chickens, usually those used as layers who require higher nutritional needs than broilers for producing eggs. Laying hens who receive nutritious diets often produce more eggs.
High quality mashes will contain uniform particles that poultry can readily pick up, helping prevent waste and boredom which could potentially slow egg production or cause illness.
Good quality mashes contain high levels of energy and protein, along with plenty of digestible energy for easier consumption. But if it contains too little energy, it could result in decreased body weight (BW) and feed conversion rate (FCR), as birds may not consume enough to obtain the essential nutrients and it may be harder for them to digest such an indigestible diet.
