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Feeding and health
Feeding
Hens will eat pretty much anything - they are are omnivores. They will decimate your flower and vegetable beds, help you dig the garden and pick out the worms and bugs from under your spade; and I have seen them hunt down and eat a mouse with relish. Their natural environment is woodland - all domestic breeds are descended from the Jungle Fowl of Eastern Asia - and they enjoy foraging for the small insects that live on woodland floors - or in your compost heap.
This is great for giving them a balanced diet - but not everyone has a large area of woodland to let their poultry range free in.
It is usual to feed a mixture of 'layers pellets' (or mash) and corn - either a mixture of wheat and maize, or wheat on it's own. They also need grit, to help them digest their food, and shell (usually crushed oyster shell), to help them produce strong-shelled eggs.
As a rough rule of thumb, every day you should feed each heavy-breed bird:
- Layers' pellets or growers' pellets (or mash) - 150g (5oz)
- Corn (mixed, or just wheat) - 50g (2oz)
It is usual to feed pellets in the morning and feed the corn in the evening. This has two advantages - one, that the corn is a more 'lasting' feed and will keep them going overnight. And secondly, in my experience, they tend to prefer the corn over the pellets - so if you have let them out of their pen during the day, you can throw the corn down on the ground inside and they will all rush in and you can shut them up!
If you have space inside their house, you might consider leaving the pellets in a feeder available all day. I find that they don't overeat on it - whereas they perhaps will if you leave them corn available all the time. However, if you do this, be careful that you are not attracting rats, or feeding the wild bird population. You will find that they eat more when it's cold and less when it's very warm.
You should also try to ensure that they have some greens hung up in the pen to peck at - not only will this keep them occupied if they don't get let out to scratch around; but it's also an extra source of vitamins and nutrients. Brassicas, lettuce, fruit and veg - they will have a go at pretty much anything.
Fresh drinking water should be available at all times.
Tonics
You can add various things to your chickens' food and water to promote health and wellbeing - cider vinegar, poultry spice and similar. Many people do swear by them.- Cider vinegar is a general pick-me up that you can put in the water. It is supposed to be good for the immune system and help prevent worms / balance the digestive system. It also has the added benefit of helping to keep the water fresh.
- Garlic can be given in powdered form, or you can add a couple of crushed cloves to the drinker. Again, this is supposed to help with general health.
- Poultry Spice and similar things can be added to the feed - they are a general vitamin and mineral tonic. Many people use them in the breeding season or if their chickens have been poorly.
Maintaining Health
If you keep your chickens in good conditions and feed them well, then they should reward you by staying healthy. Sometimes they do get sick - and it is very difficult to diagnose what is wrong with poultry. Few vets specialise in them and if you find one that does, you are lucky. Keeping them warm and hoping they recover is about all you can do.
However, there are a few additional things that you can do on a regular basis to promote good health:
- Worming. Worm regularly - even if you don't think your birds have worms. You can buy various proprietary worming pellets that are added to the food for a run of a few days every so often. If you don't have a worm problem, you don't need to worm them every month - but every three months or so is a good preventative. Flubenvet is a powder that many people use - for five days at a time mixed in to the food. Some people also use one millilitres of 'Ecover' washing up liquid per gallon of water. The surfactant in it breaks down the worm casings inside the birds and deal with them without harming the birds at all.
- Red mite. Red mite are tiny blood-sucking parasites that live in chicken houses. If your chickens are reluctant to go to bed at night and seem to be a bit off colour, it might be that you have them. They can live for a long time without chickens to feed off, so a second hand house might have them; or you might buy in birds with a small mite population that gets worse. You can check the birds' feathers to see if they have a mite or louse problem and you may see them around the bottom of their trousers, just at the top of their legs. You can get various generic 'mite and louse' powders or sprays and if you have an outbreak of mites you will need to dust or spray each chicken and disinfect all the nooks and crannies of the house where they hide. I tend to include a couple of table-spoonfuls of mite and louse powder with their clean bedding every month or so, as a preventative - this works well for me, as the birds like to dust-bath in their house. Creosote or a blow-torch are other very satisfying ways to get rid of mites. If you are going to use both, remember to do the blow-torching first to avoid setting the house on fire! Pay particular attention to under the roofing felt if you use it - it harbours the mites.
- Scaly Leg is caused by a parasitic mite that burrows under the leg-scales and makes the leg look crusty. It is infectious and needs dealing with as if untreated it can result in permanent lameness. There are various methods of treating - one successful way is to immerse the legs in surgical spirit once a week for a few weeks and scrub gently with an old toothbrush. The mites will be killed and when the bird moults brand new, clean leg-scales should grow in again. If one bird is showing symptoms, you will need to treat all of them and disinfect your housing. Again, if in any doubt, seek advice from your vet. It probably goes without saying that Scaly Leg doesn't happen spontaneously - it needs to be imported in somehow and is something to keep an eye out for when you are buying birds.
- Egg binding is when an egg forms inside the hen and she can't pass it. Symptoms are being generally 'off colour', being hunched up and miserable and, of course, no eggs. If you examine her, you should be able to feel whether the oviduct is soft and empty or hard and full of egg. You may be able to massage the egg free, or you might have to break it inside her to get it out. If the latter, you must make sure that you get all the bits of egg out, otherwise she may get an infection. If in any doubt, seek advice from your vet.
I am not a vet or an expert in poultry ailments and this is really just a starting point. There are many books out there that specialise in the health and diseases of poultry and I would recommend reading one of them - and also, finding a poultry-friendly vet before you actually need one, 'just in case'.
I would also recommend having a long, hard look at whether, if it came down to it, you could dispatch a poorly chicken. If you keep stock, you have a responsibility to them; and that includes being prepared to end their lives if there is nothing more that can be done for them. If you know that you wouldn't be able to do it yourself, then find someone who could, who is willing to help you. You will more than likely never need to - but it's not the kind of thing you want to be having to have first-thoughts about if you have a sick bird that you know is suffering and needs dealing with.
