Organic Chicken Raising! Discussions here!

[modern_pioneer]

Is this ratio helpful?

http://www.fertrell.com/poultry.html

 

[noobiechickenlady]

Are there people here who do not have their chickens on any commercial feed at all - just grains, forage, and table/garden scraps? (Maybe this is what Free does, based on a very early post in this thread?)
Also, does anyone feed the egg shells back to the chickens? I have heard this can be done to boost calcium intake rather than oyster shell. And does anyone feed some of the (cooked) eggs back to the chickens for extra protein? (In case you couldn't tell, I'm thinking about ways to minimize reliance on commercial feed.) Thanks for any input.

I feed mine table scraps, boiled eggs, whole corn, crunched up eggshells, a bit of oyster shell, whole wheat berries (untreated seed quality) yogurt, veggie peelings & any bugs I picked out of the garden. Plus they eat the catfood, my mom's dogfood & all the bugs & grass seeds & sprouts they can scavage. They are healthy, shiny & they come running anytime I go outside to see if I have anything tasty. I was getting an egg a day from each of them, until the days started getting shorter. Now I'm get 1-2 eggs. This will probably go down even more as the days continue to get shorter.

 

[dragonlaurel]

Puck Puck- Try to contact the neighbor and offer to mow for them so the place looks occupied. Use a bagger and bring the weeds home for your chickens.
Might make some $ while making your chickens happy.

 

[Puck-Puck]

Good grief, I haven't been on this site for ages, and here there's a fresh message!

I thank you for your thoughts; mowing a little difficult now that it's under snow. Depending on which neighbour, it'd vary from "thanks!" to "you missed a bit, and trim the trees too, will you." But I'm contemplating a stealth tractor for spring.