Chickens require a nutritionally-balanced diet in order to thrive. Feeding fruit, vegetables, supplemental grain or table scraps such as sunflower seeds may skew their nutrition and lead to behavioral issues, aggression issues, worm infestation, obesity or egg binding issues.
Age-specific feed will ensure optimal health in your flock and prevent imbalanced nutrition.
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Dry Mash
Producing balanced chicken feed can be an arduous and time-consuming task, involving procuring ingredients, milling them down to powder form and then pelleting according to an exact formulation.
Supplements should also be added to ensure that your flock receives all the nutrients it requires from its diet, including calcium (from powdered minerals such as aragonite) and protein (often found as part of complete layer feed).
One way to cut costs and save money on feed costs is to make a homemade dry mash for your flock at home. This can include both intentional ingredients as well as any uneaten foods from pantry or fridge that were meant for consumption but didn’t end up getting eaten by your birds. Once fermented, serve this thick oatmeal-textured food directly to them; they’re sure to love it and may even enjoy adding dried mealworms on top as treats!
Dry Pellets
Pellet chicken feed is a premium-grade poultry diet designed to meet the specific nutritional requirements of laying hens and other poultry, available both as pellets and crumbles; both types contain equivalent levels of nutrients; however, pellets may be more convenient as chick starter feed.
Raw materials used for making this type of feed include barley, wheat, corn, peas and oats; these ingredients are then ground into fine powder before being mixed with cultured yeast, fish meal, kelp meal, flax seed meal crab meal salt aragonite to form the premix and press into pellets for pelleting.
Natural binders improve pelletability of ingredients and minimize fines production in their processing, leading to improved pellet quality and retention, reduced need for synthetic binders with adverse environmental impacts, easier handling and decreased inventory needs.
Shell Grit
Grit is a crucial component of chicken nutrition, aiding their digestive health and providing them with calcium sources. Made up of ground up seashells that resemble coarse gravel, adding shell grit to poultry feed will not only boost slow release calcium for bone health but also provide strong eggshells.
Free-ranging chickens naturally swallow stones and shells to aid their digestion, but backyard chickens require shell grit to assist them with grinding food in their gizzards, which serve as their digestive organs and have teeth-like structures known as gizzards.
Pet stores carry both soluble and oyster shell grit, or you can combine both types for a finer mixed grit. Once purchased, put some in a small bowl for your chickens to pick at when they want or mix into their food pellets and place in their feeders.
Medicated Feeds
Medicated chick feeds contain amprolium, an antibiotic which works to prevent coccidiosis in baby chickens by blocking their uptake of Vitamin B1, an essential nutrient needed by Cocci to reproduce. This protection is important if they haven’t received vaccine against Cocci.
Many people opt to raise their chicks without using medicated feed, yet this approach carries risks. Medicated chick food contains antibiotics and amprolium which may reduce beneficial bacteria found in your chicken’s digestive system and allow harmful ones to take hold instead.
Your chicks may also be eating too much fat from food sources like sunflower seeds and flock blocks (also called suet). This could result in Fatty Liver Hemorrhagic Syndrome in laying hens; this condition causes soft liver tissue that’s more prone to bleeding – which is often fatal and an immediate threat of death for your chickens.
