Read Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens Online
Authors: Gail Damerow
Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (27 page)
It can be a training device: throw down a handful while crooning “Here chick, chick, chick”; your chickens will learn to come when you call.
It may be used to gather your chickens into their shelter so you can close them in for the night before they’d otherwise be ready to go inside.
It may be used to trick chickens into stirring up their bedding to keep it loose and dry: toss a handful over the litter once a day, traditionally late in the afternoon when birds are thinking of going to roost.
It gives active range-fed layers an extra energy boost and raises plump, tasty corn-fed broilers.
It may be used to reduce protein in the diet of cocks outside breeding season, thus minimizing the cost of feeding them.
If fed at dusk in winter, it gives chickens energy to stay warm overnight.
In the summertime, when energy needs go down, reduce the scratch or switch to whole oats. Including whole oats as part of the summer diet minimizes heat stress and improves egg production in hot weather.
Sprouting grains before you feed them improves their vitamin, mineral, and protein content and provides an excellent source of green feed during winter and spring when naturally growing greens are not plentiful. Any edible grain, seed, or legume may be sprouted. Be sure to use fresh seed that has not been treated with a fungicide or any other chemical (as farm crop and garden seeds often are). Most scratch grains contain cracked corn, which of course won’t sprout, but any whole grain intended for livestock should sprout quite nicely. Do a keyword search for “seed sprouting” on the Internet, and you will find all sorts of sprouting seeds and bulk sprouting trays and barrels, as well as instructions on how to sprout various kinds of grains and seeds. Oats are a particular favorite for chickens. One pound (.5 kg) of oats makes about 3½ pounds (1.5 kg) of sprouts.
If you sprout any or all of the grain portion of your chickens’ diet, feed the sprouts separately. Combining them with dry ingredients in a ration mix can cause the dry feeds to go moldy if they are not eaten up right away. Chances
are your chickens will gobble down the sprouts first, so no need to worry about them going moldy.
GRAIN SPROUTS |
To make sprouts you’ll need a large jar or small bucket with a cover of wire screen, plastic screen, or cheesecloth to let in air. Since sprouting causes grain to expand eightfold, start with no more grain than fills one-eighth of the container. |
Thoroughly wash the grain, cover it with fresh warm water, and soak it for 5 to 12 hours at room temperature. The length of soak depends on the size of the seeds: soak small seeds for 5 hours, medium seeds for 8 hours, and grains for 10 to 12 hours. |
Rinse the soaked grain in warm (not hot) water and drain. At this point the container should be about one-fourth filled with plump grain. Turn the container on its side so the grain distributes evenly along its length, and place it in a warm, darkened place. Keep the grain moist by rinsing it with warm water three times a day, taking care to drain well each time so the grain won’t sour or ferment. |
Depending on the temperature and how well you keep the grain moistened, it will sprout in 2 or 3 days. Sprouted grains have the best flavor, tenderness, and nutritional value when tiny green leaves just begin to appear. If you have more than you wish to feed your chickens immediately, you can store the remainder in the refrigerator for a day or two to keep it fresh. |
Feeding your chickens table scraps helps increase the variety in their diet. Just about anything you eat is suitable for feeding your chickens, with a few important caveats:
Never feed raw potato peels, which chickens can’t digest easily — cook potato peels or avoid them.
Don’t feed strong-tasting foods like onions, garlic, or fish, which impart an unpleasant flavor to poultry meat and eggs.
Don’t feed avocados or guacamole unless you are absolutely certain it includes none of the brown seed cover, which contains the toxic compound
persin
that can be deadly to chickens.
Never feed anything spoiled or rotten, which can make chickens sick.
Avoid feeding fried foods, which are difficult to digest and unhealthy.