HOW TO FEED LAYING HENS, MAKING FOOD AT HOME

The health of domestic chickens and the quality of eggs directly depends on proper nutrition. Their productivity depends on it. If you choose a high-quality and balanced diet for laying hens at home, they will be born all year round. This article will tell you how to do it right.

The importance of proper nutrition for laying hens

To have a lot of eggs from chickens, it is not enough to choose a breed with high egg production for breeding. It is important to properly organize their diet. As a rule, breeds that are characterized by a high number of eggs when worn, put forward high demands on care and, in particular, feeding.

Chicken age also affects egg production. It starts carrying eggs from the 26th week of life, and the peak of productivity falls for a period of 26-49 weeks. Meals can slightly delay the process of reducing the productivity of birds. To do this, their diet should be enough vitamins, protein, and other nutrients. Food should be light, complete and well digested.

Wanting to increase productivity, it is important to know how to feed the chickens so that they are well born. To do this, experts recommend that you necessarily include in their diet legumes: peas, lentils, actually beans. Usually, chickens are not accustomed to such feed, therefore, it is first recommended to give them steamed grains in advance and add them to the usual feed or mixture.

How to feed laying hens at home

So, the most important thing is that chicken feed should be diverse and balanced. The bird should receive all the elements necessary for growth, development and productivity. In the diet should be a variety of feed.

Protein feed

Chickens need a sufficient amount of protein in the diet, because it forms muscle cells, is in the structure of the egg. In order to supplement its quantity in the ration of chickens, plant components are added to it: legumes, sunflower meal, soybeans, rapeseed crops, oilcake. An obligatory component is meat and bone meal for chickens, the remains of fish, mollusks, amphibians, earthworms.

Vitamin

Vitamins must be present in the poultry diet. Be sure to include among them vitamins D, B, A. When they are lacking, chickens develop various diseases. To provide them with enough vitamins, the diet should include silage, pine meal, fish oil, yeast, green grass, especially during the budding period.

Mineral

Food for laying hens at home should include wood ash, lime, ground shells, bone meal, chalk. This will help replenish mineral reserves in the body of the bird. Minerals are needed for the formation of bone tissue and eggshell.

Carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are necessary for the body of the chicken for normal muscle and internal organs. They are in sufficient quantities in sugar, starch, fiber. The latter is in huge quantities in whole grains, so the grain for chickens is almost the main one in the diet. Also add potatoes, beets, carrots, pumpkin.

Important! In the diet of chicken should be present and fat. They not only protect the bird from the cold, accumulate under the skin, but give it energy, are used in the formation of eggs. For their replenishment in the body, it is enough to give the hens corn and oats.

How to make a diet for laying hens

When composing a layer hen ration for a day, it is necessary to include all the elements described above in the required proportions. Protein, herbs and flour must be alternated, not forgetting about the water that must constantly be present in the bird.

Did you know? Too rich and nutritious food leads to obesity in birds. Then the hens stop moving. Therefore, the diet should be balanced.

Having decided on the diet, you need to decide how many times a day to feed the bird. Usually, feed per day is given three to four times. At the first reception they give dry food and grain, pouring out to the hens as early as possible. In the second and third - wet mash with vitamins, which are issued at regular intervals. The last feeding is carried out as late as possible and should consist only of grain. Any food must be of high quality, otherwise it will affect the performance and health of chickens.

Features of the spring diet

Now let's understand what you can feed the chicken in the spring. This is the period when it comes time to move from a winter diet to a regular diet. But the transition should not be sharp, so in the spring they begin to introduce it gradually. At this time, the bird is already released into the street, where it can pluck fresh young grass. But at the same time, along with the feed, it is necessary to give more germinated grain, which is rich in vitamin E. You also need to increase the amount of vitamin B and C in the diet of chickens. To do this, add brewer's yeast to the feed.

How to feed laying hens in summer

The peculiarity of feeding laying hens at home in the summer is different in that the bird spends a lot of time on the walking, so she is able to find grass and other food for herself. Accordingly, the amount of grass, chalk and gravel in the feed is reduced. And the number of feedings is reduced to two times. In the morning they pour out a wet mash, in the evening - grain. But if chickens are not allowed out of the pen in the summer, they should be fed three times a day.

Did you know? Even in the summer, when there are many nutrients in the diet, it is necessary to constantly monitor the state of the herd as a whole and each of its individual representatives. To do this, assess the condition of bird droppings. In healthy representatives, it is dark in color with a slight white bloom, dense. If there is a deviation from the norm, it means that the diet is unbalanced or the bird is sick.

During this period, the daily diet should include the following meals:

5.5 grams of salt and minerals;
10-15 g of protein;
2 g of bone meal;
10 g of vitamin hay flour;
30-50 g of green fodder;
50 grams of grain;
50 g of flour.

How to feed laying hens during molting

With a decrease in daylight hours, chickens start to molt and productivity decreases. But it was during this period that chickens needed the most complete feed, as their bodies were weakened. It is recommended to add to the diet sulfur, minerals, make sure that the food of chickens is not only diverse, but also high-calorie.

Did you know? Some owners specifically cause the chickens to molt, reducing the lighting in the hen house and limiting the birds in the feed. For several days it is kept exclusively on the water. Having received such stress, hens begin to fade. At this time, resume full feeding.

At the same time, it is not at all necessary to purchase expensive feed for this period of bird life. As a rule, every gardener, knowing how to feed laying hens at home, will find everything he needs in his backyard.

We make a diet for laying hens in the winter

The number of feedings of chickens in the winter is reduced to three times. The first is at about 8 am, then at about 1 pm, after lunch, and the last - in the evening. The last feeding must consist exclusively of grain.

Important! Blend in winter should be given only during the day, during the second feeding. At the same time it is necessary to cook it with warm water and make sure that the chickens eat it warm.

In winter, chickens need to be fed with succulent feeds, such as carrots, beets, pumpkins. Some wonder if it is possible to give zucchini to chickens. In fact, even necessary, as in the winter they will help to compensate for the lack of vitamins and fiber. Also, sunflower cake is added to the mash, which is an excellent source of fat and protein for poultry.

Be sure to in the feeders must be ground chalk or gravel. Along the walls of the coop must be warm drinking water. It is necessary to change it and wash the drinkers regularly.

The daily ration of chickens in winter should include:

2 g of bone meal;
5.5 grams of minerals and salt;
10 g hay flour or dried nettle;
100 g of dairy products;
100 g of potatoes;
7 g of meal and cake;
50 grams of grain;
30 g mash.

Food should be detailed knife or grind in a meat grinder. Vegetables can be boiled and crushed for mash. Also in the winter in the coop should be hay. From it form small bunches and fasten to nails at feeders at a height of about 40 cm from the floor.

Important! Often the question arises whether it is possible to feed laying hens with boiled potatoes. It is believed that it is harmful and dangerous for chickens. However, toxic substances that come from sprouted or spoiled tubers are dangerous. Therefore, it is necessary to use only good potatoes for food, and after cooking, drain all the water from it.

Ready-mix for feeding laying hens

As you can see, feeding chickens is not an easy process. Their diet should be varied and balanced. At first glance, it seems that the only way out is to buy mixed fodder. This is fully justified if there is a large number of birds. But if laying hens are taken to be kept at home for their own needs, they can arrange feeding in their own mixtures.

There are many recipes for their preparation, but one of the best ones is the following:

salt - no more than 3 g;
vitamins - 10-15 g;
peas - 20-30 g;
grass meal - 30-50 g;
fodder yeast - 40-50 g;
fish meal - 50-60 g;
meat and bone meal - 60-80 g;
sunflower meal - 70-100 g;
barley - 70-100 g;
wheat - 120-150 g;
corn - 450-500 g.

This is quite enough to prepare a kilogram of food, the quality and freshness of which will not be doubted. For a change, you can prepare food for this recipe:

salt - no more than 5 g;
bone meal - 20-30 g;
sugar or fodder beet - 50-60 g;
crushed chalk - 60-70 g;
dust or well chopped hay - 100-120 g;
meal or cake - 100-110 g;
waste of meat and fish - 100-120 g;
wheat bran - 100-150 g;
chopped vegetables - 200 g;
skimmed or sour milk - 200-250 ml;
combined silage - 400-450 g;
whole grain wheat or barley - 700-750 g;
boiled potatoes - 500-900 g.

This feed is quite enough to feed ten hens per day. It is important that all ingredients are crushed and mixed well.

To solve the issue of avitaminosis chickens help yeast feed. To do this, take about 20 g of Baker's yeast and dilute them in 0.5 liters of water. Then add a kilogram of feed and mix well. The mixture must be left in a warm place for 8 hours. Per day for one chicken it is necessary to allocate 15-25 g of such feed.

Homemade feed or purchased - which is better

As you can see, knowing the approximate norms of feeding laying hens at home, food can be made independently. But the logical question arises, what is better - self-made fodder or factory feed? This question has no definite answer. Each owner decides on his own, based on the characteristics of the breed of chickens, their number and personal preferences.

Each solution will have its own advantages and disadvantages. Thus, it is difficult to keep the perfect balance of nutrients needed by the poultry body in its own food. In any case, each time it will be an approximate combination. But this is not so important when chickens are raised not on an industrial scale, but exclusively for their own needs.

The homemade blender will always be fresh. You know exactly what it is made from, how fresh the ingredients are. And this is a huge advantage over mixed feeds, which have a limited shelf life, but can be stored for a long time with the seller. But the use of wet mash imposes increased demands on the content of the chicken coop. Feeders should be cleaned and cleaned regularly, so that the remnants of food will not be moldy and sour.

Practice shows that with equal needs, chickens eat more feed than mash. Therefore, the use of the first is justified if the bird is grown for meat. For laying hens it does not matter, so you can save on expensive purchased feed. In addition, a rich and nourishing food provokes their early onset of laying eggs, and this is bad for the health of the bird. In addition, the period of socks of small eggs increases significantly.

It is possible to feed laying hens in different ways, it is only important to maintain a balance in proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins. It is easier to do this using compound feed, but you can prepare mash beans yourself. For this you need to figure out when and what products can be given to the bird. The diet of her feeding differs in different seasons. It is also influenced by the bird’s lifestyle. In general, it is fed 3-4 times a day with different foods.