Are you raising them to sell the eggs? If not, I would not worry about
feeding them much except during lean times of the year. I've had chickens
for 35 years now (not the same ones, lol) and they've all fed themselves on
bugs and forage and done very well at keeping me up to my eyeballs in eggs.
The only thing is that the yolks are big relative to the whites when
compared to store bought eggs. I only feed my chickens when winter gets
really bad (only a couple weeks of the year here in central TX). However, I
raise livestock so they get a little leftover feed from time to time and
they have access to the compose pile which they adore as a source of bits
and pieces of fruits and veggies and bugs and worms. They normally stake
out a territory of about an acre with the vast majority of their time spent
on less than that. They sleep in trees and make me hunt for their eggs
every morning. My chickens seem healthy and tend to live unusually long
lives for chickens - most between 10 to 15 years. So, my lack of attention
to them seems to agree with them.
===================================================
Judy Watson
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CHICKENS-101@yahoogroups.com
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