Chickens require a combination of proteins, calcium, vitamins, and minerals in their diet in order to lay eggs that are both nutritious and strong in terms of shell strength. A commercially available complete diet designed specifically for egg laying birds is the best way of providing these essential nutrients.
At 18 weeks of age, baby chicks, teenage chickens (pullets), and adult egg laying hens should all be transitioned onto layer diets.
Contents
Protein
Chicken feeds contain protein, an essential nutrient for birds. Protein sources include legumes, oilseeds and animal protein meals such as meatmeal. Most of this comes from plants as chickens are omnivorous animals. Some feeds may also include animal fat as energy source or source of fatty acids.
Hens require a diet with 16-18% protein in order to meet their nutritional needs and produce strong egg shells. Calcium supplementation should also ensure they receive enough calcium in their diet.
Feed comes in both crumble and pellet forms; for young chicks, crumble feed should be fed until 12 weeks old when crumble or pellet feed should take its place. When chicks start laying eggs, crumble feed can continue being given until then.
Fats
Diet is essential for optimal laying hen health and egg production, and is available in pellet form, mash or crumbles – each providing essential nutrition but differing only in texture; crumbles are coarser in texture than pellets.
Carbohydrates in chicken feed provide energy while protein supports muscle and bone development in hens. Fats must also be provided, but must first be rendered and heat-treated so as to reduce anti-nutritive factors that would make their digestion difficult. Chickens need both vegetable proteins such as meal and oilcake as well as meat sources like fish meal and poultry fat in order to receive essential amino acids lysine and methionine, essential for turning feed into usable energy sources.
Vitamins
Chickens in the wild consume an abundance of foods, from insects and grains to seeds and green forage. Their diet provides them with all of the vitamins they require for proper functioning.
Vitamins are required in small amounts for optimal health, growth and reproduction. They’re also essential in breaking down other nutrients found in feed. Vitamin A, D, E and K fall under this category while others like Thiamin, Riboflavin Niacin Pantothenic Acid Biotin Folic Acid Cobalamin also fall within this classification.
Commercially produced layer feed contains all of the vitamins your flock requires in mash, crumble or pellet form; while homemade chicken food often includes supplements like brewer’s yeast for B vitamins, flaxseed for Omega-3 fatty acids and powdered probiotics for digestive health – these can either be mixed into your feed directly or added separately as powder, concentrate or balancers.
Minerals
Chickens require minerals in their diet to support normal functions, including those related to the nervous and digestive systems. Calcium and phosphorus are necessary for egg shell production while copper, iodine manganese iron zinc support overall body wellness.
Grain feeds contain minimal minerals, so commercial poultry food products often include mineral supplements from sources like limestone or oyster shell, dicalcium phosphate or divalent metal phosphate to make up any nutritional gaps.
Poultry feeds also include trace minerals like boron, fluorine, molybdenum and vanadium in minute amounts for optimal poultry health. Trace minerals can come from inorganic or organic sources with differing degrees of bioavailability; organically complexed or chelated trace minerals offer greater bioavailability than inorganic mineral salts [1].
Fiber
Fiber is composed of various plant structural materials. It is made up of non-starch polysaccharides (NSPs) such as cellulose and hemicellulose as well as non-saccharide substances like lignin. Because raw material ration optimisation can vary considerably, crude fibre values of raw materials vary significantly, making accurate ratio optimization challenging.
Dietary fibre often gets a bad rep in poultry nutrition, but research demonstrates its value in terms of increasing feed intake, binding dust more effectively and carrying essential nutrients more effectively – in turn reducing vices such as feather picking and egg binding. Achieve this high level with conventional maize/soya raw materials can be challenging; one solution could be using lignocellulose products as concentrated sources of crude fiber for more consistent results.
