Diet and Nutrition
Chickens have become very popular in the backyard. Chickens were once viewed as livestock, now people are keeping them as pets.
That's where this topic begins.
Everyone wants their chickens to be as happy and healthy as they can be and in return give us as many eggs to their maximum potential.
I'm going to help you achieve both the healthy chickens and the maximum egg flow.
It all starts with DIET.
Diet is everything in laying hens and more of something healthy other than their nutritionally complete chicken feed is not helpful and not beneficial.
The other healthy food items just dilute the 38 nutrients a laying hen requires daily. How that works is, if she is eating strawberry for example, yes strawberries are healthy but a strawberry might only have 6 nutrients for example that a hen requires. She is now missing all the other nutrients that make up the 38 that she needs to keep her immune system healthy (which reflects on less health issues), lay eggs to her maximum potential and have longevity.
Obesity is the most common problem in backyard flocks and chicken owners do not realize they are causing their chickens to become obese and its from them feeding their chickens treats and extras, even the healthy extras will make them obese.
Obesity can affect egg production, decreased fertility, frequent multiple yolked-eggs, over sized eggs, egg binding and prolapsed vent and even fatty liver disease.
So many people refer back to the days when farmers kept chickens. They were not kept as pets.
They did not have a chicken feed available back then, so chickens lived off the land and had access to grains from the farm animals. That did not meet the nutritional needs a laying hen requires so their egg production suffered or if they became ill, and as a result were that nights dinner.
They grew them from chicks in the spring, they laid their eggs through the season and going into fall, processed them as the farmers generally didn't want to keep and feed them over winter.
We have now evolved as a society and there are poultry scientists and poultry nutritionists that have done extensive studies on laying hen nutrition because of the commercial egg laying industries. We now have available to us for our convenience, a nutritionally complete bagged chicken feed with all 38 vitamins and nutrients they need to be healthy.
The commercial egg laying industries need their hens to be the healthiest they can be to maximize egg production. How that is accomplished is through proper nutrition. Egg laying is ovulating or reproduction of the species. If a hen is not the healthiest she can be, egg production will become affected. She will still be able to lay eggs for the most part but not to her potential if the diet is thrown off. The longevity is not so important to the commercial layers as they do not keep them long as the first two years of a laying hens life is the most productive. They ship them out after a year and bring a new bunch in to keep the egg flow as high as possible.
Us as backyard chicken keepers want our pets to live as long as possible so feeding them correctly is so important.
I haven't covered everything on this subject so if you have any questions, feel free to ask and leave the comment below.