Organic Chicken Feed for Laying Chickens

Feeding Chickens Organic Chicken Feed

*Feed management of chickens is critically important when you consider that you will be ingesting their eggs. For organic chicken feed of the best kind, try for as much free range time as possible.

Courtesy of neotint

Feeding organic chicken feed can be easier than with other species because if you’re eating only organic foods yourself, you can feed your chickens from your table scraps most of the time. Anyone who has kept animals knows that feeding those friendly critters can be quite expensive, especially if you’re trying to run an all-organic household.

However, they’ll still require organic chicken feed when they can’t forage enough food for themselves, the additional feed helps keep the chickens’ diet balanced. Even though free range chickens with plentiful grass and table scraps are likely getting enough nutrients, you should certainly consider giving them feed as a supplement.

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Feeding Chickens

You can make several different kinds of organic chicken feed for the different ages and uses of your chickens. You should never feed chicks food meant for adult chickens because, for example, the calcium intended for laying chickens can cause bone defects when eaten by chicks.

Having complete control over the contents of your organic chicken feed is only one step; the next is targeting your feed to meet the needs of your chickens in particular. Feed comes in three forms, all of which are different consistencies of the same ingredients. Mash is powdery, pellets are compressed mash, and crumbled are crumbled up pellets.

Most people use pellets for adult chickens and crumbles or mash for younger ones. It’s all about what a chick or chicken can stomach. If you’re planning on giving a chick your own homemade organic feed, you can’t just give it huge chunks of corn.

Anything you feed a chick is going to need to come ground up, or you will have to grind it up yourself. Adult chickens are much easier as they can peck and eat whole seeds.For chicks, look for a mash recipe targeted to your own area. Many of these recipes rely heavily on yellow corn meal, wheat middlings, wheat bran, ground oats, and alfalfa meal, with some meat meal as well. It is important to have an appropriate recipe for your chicks, so be sure to look up what is needed in your own area, especially if the chicks are raised without much free range forage.

Adult chickens are much easier to care for. You can make a large batch of chicken feed at once to save time, but it’s better to make it fresh often. The fresher your chicken feed, the better it is for your chickens. Consider making only enough for a week at a time so that you’ve got the maximum freshness ensured.

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Laying Chickens

Laying chickens need more protein than chickens kept solely as pets or for meat. They also need more calcium to make the eggshells. This can typically be accomplished by simply providing them with an open container of oyster shell calcium that they can access as they please.

Raising laying chickens is the next logical step after pet chickens, because chickens naturally lay eggs. It’s not very difficult to ensure that the chickens you raise are great egg layers, since it’s simply a matter of making sure your chickens are eating the right “ingredients”.

Courtesy of Lollyknit

Free Range Chickens

Free-range chickens are healthier, happier, and cheaper to feed than their caged brethren. Even a somewhat limited access to grass to forage helps chickens out a lot. No matter how you’re raising them, though, you’ve still got to feed them.

Chickens need a few things to be healthy. Grit, for one, is very important. Chickens instinctually pick up grit to help them digest the food they eat. You should provide your chickens with grit because it may not be available in the sections of land you allow them to forage.

Grit is basically gravel, and you’re probably not keeping them on gravel. A sprinkling of small rocks on the feed you provide your chickens will solve this problem. You can collect small rocks yourself, but check what grit looks like before you go out collecting so you’re getting the right size. Be careful not to give your chickens too much or they can die of impaction.

Chickens also need food they can scratch for, like grain. This is your chicken’s daily workout! Throwing out some grain daily will keep your chickens healthy. Other than that, though, your organic chicken feed is pretty location specific, and should be formulated based on what your environment isn’t providing them.

If you look up chicken feed by state, you’ll find lots of recipes. Most involve corn, oats, wheat, barley, seeds, and salt. Some include ingredients like lentils, peanuts, and split peas. All these ingredients are easy to find in organic varieties.

Remember that these animals survive in the wild just fine, and will likely survive on your land reasonably well as long as they’re getting enough to eat. There has been plenty of research into what chickens should eat, but it’s not an exact science. Take some cues from experienced flock owners, and then dive into raising chickens on your own.

*Organic chicken food costs can be reduced significantly by feeding your chickens organic scraps from the table.

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