Strange Tastes

We have eleven more eggs since the last post and the chickens have been eating a little less feed since they've been foraging outside.  If they keep it up, our egg costs might start looking reasonable in another two weeks.

Getting better...

We've been supplementing the layer feed with sunflower seeds since I noticed that some of the chickens were eating feathers off the ground.  One of them went so far as to growl at me and then grab a particularly pretty feather that I had picked up straight out of my hand and then swallow it whole.  This was before they were going outside and getting a daily serving of worms, but it still doesn't hurt to up their protein a bit given that some of the chickens are obviously molting.

The instructions on the store bought sacks of layer feed, and conventional wisdom often repeated about raising chickens, is that you shouldn't allow your chickens to eat anything other than what comes from the store bought sack- which is perfectly balanced to maximize your flocks egg production.  Messing with the formula, by adding things like sunflower seeds or allowing foraging, will throw off this formula and then...disaster!

Of course the good people selling layer feed want you to believe this, but their logic fails on several counts. 

First, we have various breeds, some of which are laying almost every day now, some of which haven't laid an egg at all.  Some of our birds are meatier than others, some have more feathers, some are molting, some are not.  Some really like foraging outside (the Golden Comets) and some will hardly go out at all (the Auracana). Saying that a single feed formula will be ideal for all of these birds is worse than saying all people thrive on the exact same diet, and that diet doesn't vary at all during the year.  In fact, the chickens that are outside foraging should end up having a more balanced diet provided they can find enough variety on our three acre lawn. 

Second, even if the store bought feed is perfectly balanced to maximize egg production, it doesn't necessarily work out to the most efficient solution in cost per egg (which is really what we're after).

And besides, the chickens are just so happy and beautiful running around eating our lawn.

Pictures of chickens actually looking happy outside to come...

Besides feathers, the chickens have been catching up on their grit intake. 

Chickens don't have teeth.  And to deal with not having teeth, they eat small rocks that grind their food in their digestive tract.  Back when I was tasked with figuring out if lead in soil could make its way into chicken eggs, my initial thought was that the chicken probably couldn't eat enough soil for it to matter.  I was wrong.  Chickens eat a ridiculous amount of soil.  Basically, 30% of their diet can be rocks and sand without any adverse effects [1][2].  In fact, it actually helps them extract nutrients from their food better.  Since our chickens eat 3-4 cups of feed a day, that works out to 9 or more cups a week in rocks that our chickens might want to consume!

The first week we had the chickens we were trying to think of things to make them happy. I sacrificed a sad pineapple plant that was growing in sandy soil and put the pot in the coop.  They ate the entire contents of the two gallon pot in less than a week. That's 32 cups of sandy dirt- and they definitely ate it.  We figure they weren't getting adequate grit at their previous home.  Now that they're outside more, they've been going to town on our gravel driveway.

Speaking of strange tastes, we haven't had any more 'gamey' tasting eggs, so I'm hoping it was a fluke.

1.Van der Meulen, J., C. Kwakernaak, and C. A. Kan. "Sand intake by laying hens and its effect on egg production parameters." Journal of animal physiology and animal nutrition 92.4 (2008): 426-431.

2. Van Krimpen, M. M., et al. "Effect of nutrient dilution on feed intake, eating time and performance of hens in early lay." British poultry science 48.4 (2007): 389-398.