Interesting Question about chooks

[NorthernRaider]

Just seen an honest question about a chappess who has started keeping chooks for eggs and meat. she has followed popular prepping guidance on shelter, proper foods etc and she has now asked

" Once TSHTF and your stock of professional chicken food has been used up what are you going to feed your brood with ? "

Good point I think because even only 4 chooks will soon depopulate a garden of seeds, grains and bugs.

[SecretPrepper]

You need to start growing stuff just for chooks.
Brassicas, sunflowers,grass or a bug farm

[NorthernRaider]

I used to breed rabbits with moderate success, but I was much happier and successful breeding carp and gold fish, SD has had success with chooks as has HAL , I think perhaps next year if I get the allotment I have applied for I will have a go myself with chooks, thanks for the info about Brassicas and Sun flowers.

[Mortblanc]

I take it that the OP involves a question about food for chickens from someone that knows nothing about chickens.

All depends on your frame of reference. If you keep them in battery cages you will have to feed them.

If they free range, as they have for all eternity, they will feed themselves and all you need is a fist full of some treat or a few scraps of waste to keep them coming home to their pen at night.

If you are worrying about folks killing them if they free range just keep them penned up until "the mass die off" and all your other favorite things has occurred and then let them loose when there is no one left to kill them.

Feed is not a real problem in that situation since a 3 month supply should be adequate and after that every human in the known world, except for you, will be dead. Correct?

My 8 birds used to go through a 20 Kilo bag each month when I was keeping them penned and feeding them during the winter. That is a little over a pound of feed per day for 8 birds.

I have reduced the flock to 4 and it is summer and they are getting scraps from the kitchen, bugs and seed from the nearby fields and any bad tomatoes from the garden. They are still averaging 3 eggs daily from 4 hens.

[T-oddity]

This might be of interest to some, I use this type of maggot bucket occasionally for my chickens, I reckon it would be good for feeding fish as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXWbBC1k...47985F72DB

[MaryN]

Chickens have been looking after themselves for eons and will happily survive free-ranging around the garden if there is enough space for them. This time of year I let mine out of their (large) run to trundle happily round the garden where they forage and rootle for bugs and other titbits. In winter they get table scraps, brassicas, the occasional armful of long grass and weeds to play with, and a top up of cut maize. I've never seen a starving chicken.

[Straight Shooter]

my chooks have a fair size run......if I let them out onto the ground......they would not last five mins....lots of foxes around here and lots of cover... but they seem to thrive okay .....I give them cooked breaky everyday ....peelings,any scraps .....they wait for me ....and the hello girls everyday at six a m .

[Devonian]

We lay down half a dozen or so loose paving slabs or off cuts of plywood or even large logs, just lay them down on the grass or mud, leave them in place for a week, then lift and move one slab every couple of days (in sequence!) to a new position. As you lift each slab you will uncover a huge number of grubs, insects and worms which have made their home under the slab and the chickens go mad for them scratching around for ages even after everything has been consumed.

[MaryN]

What a great idea, Devonian, I'll have to try that. I guess it would also work with bricks or old logs and such.

[Devonian]

(30 August 2014, 19:56)MaryN Wrote: What a great idea, Devonian, I'll have to try that. I guess it would also work with bricks or old logs and such.

Yes bricks/logs work as well, but we found that things with a larger surface (in contact with the ground) are better. Even things like old kitchen cupboard doors or scaffold planks, also the longer they are left before you move them the better.