At the present time, passing of any rural farmsteads, you can hear the painfully familiar voice males and females. In modern conditions of life the question of breeding poultry is becoming increasingly important.
Every family wants to have it on your table fresh eggs and delicious nutritious meat.
Picky the bird is rightly considered to be domestic chickens. They love to eat grain, weed the greens from the beds, remnants of feed, obtained with goats and pigs and even waste from the table person. But in this badly balanced diet is very difficult to achieve the high productivity of the home farm.
The wild ancestors of chicken and its closest relatives in their natural environment they eat is very diverse. The berries and fruits, herbs and seeds, larvae and adult insects, earthworms – not a complete menu of these birds. Of course, feeding chickens at home is hard to do so varied, but still very important to give their Pets all the nutrients for development, growth and good productivity.
The composition of feed for chickens at home
Different types of crops constitute about 60% of the total menu for the chickens. And also, poultry, you need to fully give animals and plant food that supply all the vital organs of hens in fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Need to add in the diet minerals and various vitamin supplements.
Nutritional value of feed
When feeding chickens at home need to consider the relationship between the products of different substances.
The composition of the feed should include:
- Proteins are the basic material in the body of a bird used for building cells. That protein is the main component in chicken eggs. Proteins of animal origin (wastes of fish production, bone meal, earth worms, various mollusks, and amphibians) and plant origin – rape oilcake sunflower, legumes, soybeans must fully be present in the feed for chickens.
- Fats are the elements that make up the basis for the energy supply of chicken. This stock is spent on the formation of eggs and is deposited in the subcutaneous layer. Corn, oats and other cereals are considered the main suppliers of fat in the body of a bird.
- Carbohydrates in full ensure the coordinated work of all organs and muscles of chickens. So the food the chickens should contain the right amount of fiber, sugar, starch. Carbohydrates are part of the succulent fodder such as fodder beet, potatoes, carrots. Fiber more only exist in the shells of whole grains.
- Vitamins are also necessary nutrients. Of particular importance are vitamins A, B and D, which many in the fish oil, silage, green grass, coniferous flour, etc. Without the necessary amount of vitamins chickens can start to hurt, which reduces their productivity.
- Minerals are considered the building blocks of the egg shell and skeleton birds. Therefore, a separate container should always be contained wood ash, chalk, gravel, bone meal or lime.
Grains in the menu of the CSD
Grains well digested in the organism of chickens. They are a rich source of fiber, carbohydrates and vitamins.
Every poultry farmer should include in the diet of poultry:
- Corn is rich in carbohydrates. To improve assimilation, it is first necessary to grind.
- Wheat contain many vitamins B and E, particularly for laying hens.
- Barley is very useful for meat chickens egg and meat breeds.
- Wheat bran, superior in nutritional value for chickens hens even whole grain.
- Oats are rich in fiber. It needs to be crushed and steamed for better digestion, because untreated grain irritates the esophagus and intestine of chickens.
- Oat bran can be up to 20% of the volume of cereals in the diet and a great substitute for corn.
- Millet and rye.
- Buckwheat, occupying not more than 10% from the norm for the feed of laying hens.
Still, even in the most balanced blends, made by hand at home from grasses, sometimes lack of nutrients in laying hens.
Therefore, it is useful to add to the diet of laying hens:
- Culture of legumes.
- Sunflower seeds and flax.
- Oil-cake and meal, rich in fiber and protein.
The types of feed
In private farms is primarily for the nutrition of laying hens used waste garden, garden and kitchen.
Main products:
- Potatoes unfit for food of man (small, sprouted, green) and clean it. The norm for one hen 50-10 grams per day.
- Bread, soaked in a stale or dead, black or white laying hens eat willingly.
- Succulent and green fodder are presented in the form of waste from the garden. The tops of beets, carrots, cabbage leaf, fruit patency in powdered form are a great addition made to the mash for laying hens.
- Kitchen waste (residues of meat dishes, fish guts and heads, crushed fresh bones) have a positive impact on the productivity of chickens of hens.
- Protein feeds. Milk and its products (curd, yogurt, buttermilk, whey) are widely used in personal farmsteads for the nutrition of laying hens. Complete feed, rich in protein, are considered earthworms, small amphibians, may beetles.
Preparing food with your own hands
To the body laying hens assimilated as much as possible the amount of nutrients and feed the bird eats most readily, the poultry farmer has to prepare food for chickens laying hens with your hands.
This training includes:
- Root vegetables and potatoes need to RUB in the paste or pulp on a grater with your hands, then mix with flour mixes or other feed is added.
- Green potatoes and the sprouts in the toxic substance solanine. When cooking this substance goes into the water. So after boiling the water is drained, and mashed the potatoes add the flour and give the mixture to the laying hen.
- To the poisoning of birds can result in the waste products of mold fungi therefore, when preparing the feed with your own hands, it is impossible to prevent falling into the food of moldy bread.
- Before addition of the wet mash all the protein feeds must be well crushed.
- Mixed grain is also desirable to apply to flattened or crushed (1-2 mm size nibs).
- With the help of preserving the whey for future use harvested meat and fish waste. Filled with serum mass can be stored up to two weeks at temperature above 20℃.
- To improve the digestion of proteins, grain legumes need to be soaked and then steamed in a little water.
- If necessary, the nettles need to scald and fruit pedancy to boil. And crushed with your hands waste of backyard and garden before use.
- Sprouted grain is rich in vitamins, very useful to keep the bird in the winter.
Feed in the diet
Feed belongs to the category of dry feed for the chickens. It is made and sold in a finely ground condition, which can prevent overeating and obesity in chickens. Feed prepared on-farm are strictly according to GOST.
The feed composition can be varied and are prepared for a certain type chickens. Industrial enterprises are prepared specially balanced feed for chickens, hens laying hens, boiler chickens.
Feed for laying hens consists of the following components:
- Floral elements and grain mixture.
- Trace elements.
- The elements of animal origin.
- Vitamins natural.
Daily rate for single laying hens compound feed is characterized by the composition:
- Grain of wheat – 50 grams.
- Barley – 40g.
- Corn – 10gr.
- The bone meal -1 gr.
- Bran – 20 oz.
- Shells, crushed – 5 oz.
- Fodder chalk – 3 gr.
- Vitamins – 1 oz.
- Table salt – 0.5 oz.
This is the main composition of the required components present in the feed mixtures.
The mode of feeding chickens
The time of year depends on the mode of feeding of laying hens. So, in the summer to feed the birds need twice a day, and in winter three times a day.
The most unpleasant Kurya, the habit is to rake the grain in the feeders. Therefore, dry food feeders should be filled to only a third of the volume, as long as the chickens eat. But mash is applied in such quantity that the chickens she was eating within the hour before the start of the souring of the components of mash.
Wet food is necessary to give in the morning and in the afternoon. And at night it is necessary to apply for easy feeding which includes grain or feed. At each feeding is necessary to clean the trough. And not to forget, when feeding, to monitor the availability of clean water.
Winter food is necessary to give in the morning at 08.00, lunch feeding necessary to produce at 13.00, and the evening feeding birds need at 18.00. If there is a possibility of range chickens on green grass in summer, feeding is done twice a day – at 08.00 in the morning and 18.00 in the evening. If there is no possibility of herding chickens, then in the summer we need to organize a dining feeding birds.
The nutrition of laying hens during summer and winter periods
Novice breeders should know that feeding in warm and cold season diet differ in the nutritional value of food.
In the summer, when grazing birds in the fresh air, the daily feeding of laying hens as follows:
- Grain – 50 gr.
- Blend flour – 50 gr.
- Hay vitamin flour – 10 gr.
- Solid juicy food – 30-50 gr.
- Feed protein – 10-15 grams.
- The bone meal – 2 oz.
- Salt and mineral supplements is 5.5 gr.
Juicy green fodder, in winter, replace potatoes or wet mash, use of feed protein.
Diet per day looks like this:
- The mash – 30 gr.
- Grain – 50 gr.
- Potatoes – 100 gr.
- Groats and cakes – 7 gr.
- Dried nettles or hay flour – 10 gr.
- The bone meal – 2 oz.
- Dairy products or yogurt – 100 gr.
- Mineral supplements and salt – 5,5 gr.
Of course, designed specifically for laying hens industrial animal feed, and contains almost all the elements necessary to supply your Pets, but a full translation into dry food in private households, uneconomical and unprofitable.
Nutrition of broiler breeds
The body chicken, to produce a ripening of meat, was radically changed in the process of selection. This property should be taken into account when drawing up the hole of a balanced diet for broiler chicken breeds. Intensive feeding birds, meat breeds should be carried out in a period of rapid growth. After which comes the period of puberty, when growth slows down the chickens, hence the need to respond immediately to this point by reducing the quantity of food. Boiler chickens breeds are much lower metabolism than conventional chickens, so they carry fewer eggs. They quickly grow fat.
The organization of feeding the bird meat breeds can be realized in two different ways. In the first case, it is necessary to feed the birds ad libitum mixtures, low-calorie content, in which small presence of proteins and carbohydrates. In the second case, use a fully balanced compound feed, but feeding is produced strictly according to the rule of one hen.
Feeding hens during molting
With the decrease in daylight in chickens usually occurs during the shedding season, which is characterized by drop in egg production birds. Some poultry farmers in the process of the onset of the molt to cause by artificial means. To do this, reduce the period of lighting in the chicken coop, and the birds are forced to starve.
Few days giving her only water, and after the molting feeding is restored in full. Food must be this period less calories, but diverse in composition. It should be added to food a greater quantity of minerals and definitely sulfur.
What you can not feed chickens
The bird, by its nature, often does not pay attention to the quality of the food, eating and mouldy and rotting pieces of food. This unpretentiousness to the feed, can sometimes lead to intestinal infections, parasitic diseases, blockage of goiter and other diseases of poultry.
Therefore, the menu of a bird, in any case, it is impossible to include fermented and sour foods, and foods with signs of mold and obvious damage. A raw potato, clean and whole roots should be completely avoided from the diet of the hens, to avoid problems with digestion. Before you enable it in menu waste from the table, they need to check and sort. In any case, it’s impossible to allow in food foil, twine, residue, packaging film and other non-edible items.
You should also check fresh grass in the absence of poisonous plants (celandine, horsetail, wormwood). These plants often become a cause of disease in laying hens.
Feed chickens butter products is not desirable. But the usual grain or wheat bread can be safely included in the diet of chickens, especially in winter. True, it’s better to give bread soaked in the view or to add to the mash.
Remember that you need to constantly monitor the status of individual chickens, and the herd as a whole. To control the quality of food is easiest on the condition of the feces of the bird. With a balanced diet litter poultry dense dark color with a light white bloom. Deviation from these indicators should alert the master and forced to make revision of food in General.
