Feeding and Watering the Flock

There are three major stages of a chicken’s life. Each of these stages requires a different type of feed for different reasons.

The first stage of course is as a chick. There are many different brands of feed, but most call the feed for this stage the Starter feed. Starter feed has more protein and the additional benefit of medicine that young chicks need to fight infection and to get healthy.

The second stage is the period of life is after nine weeks and the feed for this age is called finisher/grower or pullet. This feed is still high in protein, but lacks the medication of the Starter. The final stage begins when the hens are old enough to begin laying eggs. This feed is called Layer feed and adds calcium into the mix. It helps a hen produce eggs with strong shells.

Here is a note of caution with feeds. You should not feed Layer feed to chicks, the protein levels are not enough for them and the amount of calcium is too high. You should not feed Medicated Starter feeds to laying chickens as the medicine can affect the taste of the eggs.

All stages of chicken feed come in two main forms, pellets and crumbles. Our birds preferred the crumbles but in a pinch we used pellets. Pellets waste less feed, but crumble is easier for some smaller birds to eat.

Chicken scratch has no nutritional value at all, it’s basically a filler, and it should not be given to chicks at any time. Whole or cracked corn is the same as scratch nutrition wise. It is cheaper than feed, but use it sparingly. Oyster shell calcium is sometimes provided to help the hens. They will only eat it if they need it, they prefer the taste of feed to chunks of rock.

Money Saving Tips for Chicken Feed

Chickens will eat almost anything! From those noodles that didn’t get eaten to left over bread. You can feed them table scraps.

When you use those eggs the hens are laying, save the shells and boil them to kill salmonella that may be present. Crush the shells into unrecognizable pieces and toss them out for them instead of purchasing oyster shell calcium. The ends of carrots, the watermelon rind, apple cores, fruit peelings, corn husks, everything that can go into the compost pile can be used to nourish your birds.

If you have enough land, you might consider growing some chicken feed. Millet is one of a chickens favorite meals and it grows quickly. Fast growing grasses and beans are two more options! But what about bugs, after all chickens eat tons of bugs! One of the easiest insects to raise is crickets and a single purchase of one hundred crickets can yield thousands in only a few months.

Raising Crickets

To successfully raise crickets, you will need at minimum, three fourteen gallon plastic totes, three plastic bowls three inches deep with moist dirt inside, nine empty toilet paper tubes, three damp sponges and potato peelings.

A layer of vermiculite on the bottom can help reduce bacteria buildup and smell too. This will need to be replaced every three months. Label each bowl to coincide with the correct tote. (1,2,3 or use colors) Place your purchased crickets in the first tote with the sponge, the bowl, potato peelings and three empty toilet paper tubes per tote.

The crickets like to hide in dark places and toilet paper tubes make great hiding places. Make sure they are in a warm place or provide a heat lamp for them.

Note the female crickets with the long tube coming from their rear end, this is their ovipositor. The females will lay eggs in the moist dirt bowls. Make sure the sponge remains damp and that you replace the potato peelings every day or so.

In five days, remove the bowl of dirt and place it in the second tote. Put one of the other bowls in the first tote and wait another five days. Soon some of the crickets will have died, these should be removed and fed to the chickens. If there are still a substantial number of females laying eggs, wait another five days.

At this point most crickets in the first tote will have died but you should have small pinhead sized crickets emerging from the bowl in the second tote.

In another five to ten days, you will have more baby crickets in the third tote. Clean out the first tote and repeat the steps you did earlier. Don’t use soap or cleaning chemicals in the tote! It will kill the crickets.

The more dirt bowls you have, the more baby crickets are made. The more totes you have, the more adult crickets you can feed your birds. One hundred crickets can sire thousands that will grow to make thousands more. Be sure to replenish the stock every six months with new crickets to help prevent inbreeding.

Other insect raising options include mealworms and flies (for the maggots). Or you could raise worms. Either way, your supply of food for the birds is continually increasing. This saves you money!

Raising Maggots

For a renewable food source for your chickens that is even easier than crickets, consider maggots! And no, you won’t have to raise them indoors! Maggots are a good source of protein and vitamins and are a fantastic treat for your birds. This project won’t cost you a dime.

You will need:

 

Measure one inch from the bottom of the bucket and drill a series of ¼ inch holes around the bucket at the one inch line.

Drill a series of 30 holes in the sides of the buckets.

Spread an inch layer of sawdust at the bottom of each bucket. Insert a pound or two of either meat scraps that you can pick up free at many butcher shops, or table scraps into each bucket. Don’t fill the bucket with bait. Place lid on bucket and secure it tightly. Use a hammer if necessary.

Tie one end of a rope around the bucket handle and toss the other end of the rope over a tree branch. Hoist the bucket as high as you can, the smell of a maggot farm bucket is not pleasant but keeping it high in the tree will keep what you can smell to a minimum.

The flies will lay eggs in the bucket. The eggs will hatch into maggot larvae and the maggots will drop out of the holes in the bucket as they dig their way through and find the holes. Hang these over where your chickens congregate and you will have a rich source of food that rains down on your chickens from the sky.

You will know that the buckets are not producing maggots anymore when the chickens stop staring up at the buckets for a few days. If you have done everything right, by the time the maggots stop falling, the smell should be completely gone. Discard the spent sawdust and meat and replace both with fresh.

Using Feeders

Feed stores sell hanging feeders. They keep the feed up off of the ground which will in due time become infested with feces that will in turn make your birds sick. The metal ones are best as they last longer.

One thing we learned the hard way, if the feeders are hanging outside, they need to be under some kind of cover to prevent rain from spoiling the feed inside. Another thing we learned the hard way is that a chicken is skilled enough in flight to leap into the center of the feeder and eat all day long. At a minimum, there should be one feeding station per ten birds.

If the bag of feed you purchased smells moldy or you see fuzzy green growth, dispose of it. Spoiled food can kill your birds. Return it to the store immediately.

DIY Feeder

Chicken feeders keep the crumbles and pellets off of the ground and out of the fecal matter chickens leave behind. While you can purchase the metal ones, a DIY feeder is cheap and will work just as well, as long as it is an indoor feeder. No outdoor feeder is immune to moisture accumulation.

You will need the following:

 

Drill or use a hole saw and make around the outside of the bottom of the container. If you use a drill you will need multiple holes, if you are using a one inch hole saw, four will suffice.

Drill a hole in the exact center of the small bucket or container and a matching one in the exact center of the lid you will be using.

Insert the bolt up through the hole in the lid and into the bottom of the container. Screw the nut onto the bolt inside and tighten firmly.

Place the feeder in the coop area and fill it with feed. Place lid on container as the chickens will try to get inside the feeder during meal time.

Water

There are large 3, 5, and 12 gallon watering trays for chickens. These too can be hung up to prevent feces from collecting in the area where the chickens are drinking. Chickens will drink from standing water too, so make sure there are plenty of watering stations with fresh clean water. At a minimum, there should be one watering station for every ten birds.

DIY Watering Station

Chickens will drink water from just about any standing water hole they can find. It’s important to provide clean fresh water on a continual basis. One way to do this is to build your own watering stations. The cheap option involves using the five (or three) gallon plastic buckets you can pick up for free at bakeries, Chinese restaurants and fast food restaurants.

You will need the following:

 

Make sure the bucket you have is a “Food Grade” bucket. Don’t use old paint, motoroil or other chemical buckets. These can remain behind and leach into the chicken’s water supply.

Make sure the buckets you use have metal handles, sometimes the plastic ones can snap which would create a mess if one of the hens was underneath a full bucket.

Clean the bucket thoroughly. Flip it upside down and drill four holes of equal distance from the center of the bucket. The size drill bit you need depends on the size of the chicken nipples.

Insert the nipple into the hole and screw it on tight. Once the fit is tight, spread some clear silicone caulking where the nipple meets the bucket. Repeat for the remaining holes.

Hang the bucket about fifteen inches off the ground using a sturdy rope, or a strong metal dowel rod. It’s okay if the birds have to duck a little to get under the waterer.

Fill bucket about half way and hammer the lid tight so that no contaminants get into the drinking supply.

Self Regulating Chicken Watering System

For the more DIY adventurous chicken lover, there is the self regulating watering system. For this project you will need:

 

The design, size and distance from the spigot to the chicken area will determine the specifics of how you put this together.

First, measure the distance from the spigot to the area where you want the system to go. The distance challenges can be alleviated with the use of a longer hose or connecting two or more hoses together if need be. This will tell you approximately how many feet of PVC pipe you will need.

Second, determine the number of elbow pieces and end caps you need. You will need one elbow piece every time you need the pipe to change direction, from straight down out of the bucket curving into the straight pipe that runs through the chicken area. You will need one if the pipe turns a corner.

Third, determine which portions of the PVC pipe will be in the chicken area.

Fourth, drill a chicken nipple sized hole in these portions every six inches. (Size of drill bit depends on size of nipples.)

Fifth, set the PVC pipes aside and begin work on the bucket. Drill an inch diameter hole in the side of the bucket about four inches from the top. Use the hole saw to drill a two inch diameter hole in the bottom of the bucket. The hole should be as close as you get to the front of the bucket as possible. The rear of the bucket will be sitting on a raised surface and there needs to be enough of an area there for the bucket to rest on.

Sixth, connect the hose to the spigot and screw the low-flow adaptor onto the outside of the bucket where you drilled the one inch hole. (If the adapter you purchase is a different size, use a different sized drill bit.

Seventh, connect the hose to the low-flow adapter, this will fill the bucket with water when you turn the garden hose on.

Eighth, attach the float flow regulator to the one inch hole from inside the bucket. This regulator works in the same way the flow regulator in the toilet works and will shut off the flow of water when that line is reached.

Ninth, insert end piece of PVC pipe through the two inch hole in the bottom of the bucket and use a PVC ring to lock it into place. Apply caulking generously around the edges of the PVC pipe on the inside and outside of the bucket.

Tenth, piece together the rest of the PVC pipe. Do not glue it, you may want to be able to disassemble the system for cleaning or obstruction removal. Remember that the chicken nipples are to be pointed down.

Eleventh, place an end cap on the system where you want it to end. These may be later removed for expansion of system or adding elbow pieces to change direction.

Twelfth, turn on water, wait for bucket to fill and check to ensure the float flow regulator is working. Check for leaks along the pipe as well, apply caulking where necessary.

A small system like this one should cost you less than $50.