5 Things To Feed Your Chickens So They Lay Eggs All Year

today I want to show you how I mix up my homemade chicken feed so your chickens will lay lots of eggs let's go welcome to Becky's homestead [Music] what you feed your chickens is very important because when they're in the first year of life they usually lay it pretty good no matter what you feed I'm like if you're a greeny you'll be like oh they're going good but it's after that you'll be like scratching your head like what's going on they're not laying eggs anymore and the key is in the nutrition you're feeding them so I have chickens that are five years old still laying eggs regularly so that is the key that you have to feed them really good food and I'm here to tell you this works okay I'm gonna show you step by step to black oiled sunflower seeds I get the big bag it's awesome they're very small people might be like well how come you swallow one let me just show up close just so people can see this these aren't as big as the other sunflower seeds black ones are smaller and very skinny but they have a lot of oil in them so that's fat for the birds which is very good for them okay so that's that the next thing is whole corn I get a lot of questions about the whole corn it's funny how that's very confusing to people I think they're confused if it's people corn or animal corn first I want to say this when they plant corn in like the Midwest Illinois you know Indiana all those states there's two different kinds of corn they plant there are animal corn and then there is human corn you wouldn't want to eat animal corn if you just saw it corn on a cob you just picked it out of the field and you ate it it's different it's not as sweet it's not as good so just so people know there's two different kinds of corn that the farmers plant and then harvest and then sell so this I'm talking about animal corn of course when I'm talking about feeding my animals and yes it looks the same exist it's corn on the cob it grows the same and all that okay so people ask can their chickens swallow this they easily swallow it I've raised little chicks and when they're little like the size of a grapefruit they're already swallowing this they just gulp it down and mama shows them what to eat and they just go up it down so if you buy your chickens from a feed store or like a big name-brand tractor supply or whatever just start offering a few like this you know you don't have to dump a whole hump in they're good they're not eat it give them a chance just let them you know look at these for a while and then they'll start eating them especially when they get older and they start laying eggs they will need the nutrition and they'll be looking for the corn then you can increase it okay the next thing is Premium cleans oats and these I'm gonna show it handful of these now it's not doesn't look like oatmeal there's lots of different kinds of oats and you could probably do whatever but this is what I buy just because it's economical and it serves a purpose just fine it's just not rolled it's not doesn't look like oatmeal it's just that's what oats look like when they're just unprocessed they're skinny again the chickens love this this will kind of grow grass oat grass to with there's just some on the ground it'll start sprouting up and he'll be like oh it's growing into oak grass which is awesome because then they eat that and its really good for them the next thing is for animal protein I add this especially in the winter when there's not bugs okay and it's just puppy food so it could be lamb you know some of them have Buffalo in there there's there's different kinds you can just whatever kind has meat as the number one ingredient diatomaceous earth you have to keep your chickens dewormed if you want them to like lay a lot of eggs and not get sickly worms make them sickly weak it just they're in there eating up their food their body laying eggs those little worms crawl all over the larvae through their body it's really gross if you do a lot of research about worms so you want to keep them dewormed and you'll just have healthier puffy beautiful chickens and I use the diatomaceous earth and I'll show you how I put it in the tub last but not least is the oyster shells which is you know you could call that grit it's crushed oyster shells they have to have that because the way a chicken digest their food is they have this gizzard and then this rocks ends up in the gizzard and that's like a muscle and it grains the food off that's how it does it and then it moves on through the digestive system and then they extract the food and the nutrients they're not so on and so forth I'm going to show you how I mix it up in the tub I use this garbage can this garbage can works perfect and I love to take a black sharpie and I just write chicken on there which I also write pagan because they all eat the same thing and the reason I do this is in case somebody is pet-sitting for me or a family member runs out it's just so easy you know just so you know that and then I use this can I don't know the size of this can but in any way I don't know I think like kidney beans came in here or something like that and I have 13 Birds and I say Birds because I have Bubbe who's a guinea so I feed this twice a day morning and night that's how much they get 13 Birds so I'm going to show you how I mix it up in the tub now I always start with the oats is the base that's just the base of the whole mixture and then Scott's gonna hold the camera so you can see how many I put in there just to give you an idea it doesn't have to be perfect you could just get an idea and then you can just mix it up at home alright I just want to let you see how high though you know little garbage can is and then how many oats are in there and I'd say that's probably about 6 or 7 inches of oats for the base start alright next is corn you put a little bit less corn because corn is very heavy I guess you could say okay so that's probably there's you don't want to waste any of the food you want to give them all the nutrients they need but you don't want to waste it next I'm going to do the sunflower seeds whoa-ho that went bad and if you make mistake like that it's fine all right next is gonna be the diatomaceous earth and I just dumped it in here because it's easier to scoop it now this is a little quarter cup scooper this doesn't have to be perfect either so I'm gonna do two heaping now I'm gonna like churn this all up and mix it so it's all everywhere [Music] okay so basically what I'm trying to do is get the diatomaceous earth mixed through all the food and of course mix it up a bit okay so now what I'm gonna do I'm going to start the process all over again I'm going to start with the oats corn sunflower seeds and or do it another layer of that and then it'll be done [Music] [Music] some people might like one drawer or ask like why are you bothering to mix up your own why not just buy like and already made chicken feed the reason is I want to feed my animals whole food I try not to feed processed food yes from time to time I might have to buy a bag of that for convenience and I will but overall I try to feed my animals whole food that's why I mix up my own animal food and they love it they all look good and they act happy and I never ever ever have any health problems with them and it just works out so good I want to mention that I always bite waster shell crushed oyster shell for grit the store was out it was picked clean and this is all they had the reason I like the oyster shell is it does add a little bit of calcium to their diet and chickens need a high calcium diet because the muscles back there that push out the egg need calcium if your chickens don't get enough calcium and they'll start getting egg bound because those mussels will be weak and they can't push the eggs out which is a huge gross problem like you don't even want to go there so that's the reason I like to feed you know as grit the crushed oyster shell another thing I didn't tell you which I do want to mention I feed my horses alfalfa cubes and this right here I don't know if Scott can get a shot of this is what's left in the bottom of the can you know after I use all the cubes this has just crushed up alfalfa that they make the cubes out of and you know it kind of falls apart over using the bag and I dumped all this in the chicken coop because it's just little bits of alfalfa which also adds calcium to their diet if I didn't have horses and I didn't use the cubes I would just purchase a bale of alfalfa hay and then I would just keep it under cover and just throw hay in there you know whenever and let them eat it that also adds calcium to their diet and they love that stuff so that's just a little added bonus just so you know I want to dump that in there in a minute okay so what I'm gonna go do now is I'm gonna show you how I do the grit for my chickens I'll just get like I can't find my scope so I'm just using okay so this is how I do the grit it's so simple because the chickens are perfectly capable of getting the grit themselves so I'll just like throw a little bit in there and and they'll find that and get that my trees lost some Moss I'm gonna put it in the burn pile okay so now I'm gonna let the chickens out and I have to clip the door shot at night and feed my cute little darlings come on little chicky chicks see they're eating the grit because they need it for the water like now oh nothing to do with me they want to go run over there in the woods I already said it this morning though look at where they're hiding over there they're so funny their brats they're dissing me [Music] if you want to learn more about chickens and what it takes to provide good care for them so they'll a lots of eggs for you I cover housing food care breathe just all kinds of stuff you need to know about chickens I wrote a little book and I sell it on my website you can click the link in the description and buy it today

Channel: Becky's Homestead

Views: 1,229,714

Rating: 4.8622775 out of 5

Keywords: backyard chickens, raising chickens, raising chickens for eggs, chicken food

Id: UhzUMC3yLNY

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 10 2019