Recipes

[Wrigley62]

As some of you know this is my first year raising chickens and finding this website with all you knowledgeable people has been a godsend and I what to thank everyone! It has been so comforting to to know that I have a whole network of people just a couple of clicks away that are just waiting to share their knowledge and experiences.........Thank You!!! 08

I know that the cold weather is still a ways away, but, I was wondering if you could share some of your cold weather recipes with me? For chicken mash, of course. :lol: Plus, could you tell me how you came upon it?

Thank you very much,

Wrigley

 

[Wrigley62]

Are cold weather chicken feed recipes some sort of secret??? :? 11

 

[Philcott]

I will happily share mine!

Come Autumn I start giving my birds hot mash - it's made from layers mash, a handful of horsey grass nuts, cod liver oil, grit and boiling water. Mix it all up and plop it in their dish. Only mix up enough that they can consume in about 15 mins, as it goes sour quite quickly if left.

My gran told me when I was just a little girl (I'm now an old girl that still feels little! ) that if you feed your hens hot mash in winter, they will continue to lay.

I do this every winter - Oct through to Feb - and I always have eggs. Not many mind, but enough to keep myself and my friends in eggs through winter.

Hope this helps! Oh and all year round my girls and boys get soured unpasturised skim milk - I let it go thick and then put it in their dishes. They go crazy for it. Not everyone agrees with feeding milk to chickens, but I've done it for a long time, and have read that the 'old' chaps used to do so too.

 

[Wrigley62]

Thanks Philcott, that's one! How ofter do you feed this to them? Is it every day?
Thanks again and have a GREAT DAY!!

 

[chrismahon]

We've given ours hot porridge oats with milk before. They get in an awful mess and it's stone cold in minutes anyway so now we don't bother. If any look really cold they get brought in for a warm. Found that even an hour will get them up and going again for several days. I think once the body temperature drops a bit the digestive system loses efficiency. Then they can't generate enough heat anyway and it's a rapid spiral down to hypothermia (not shivvering and both feet on the floor).

 

[Marigold]

In cold weather i just mix up a big dish of ordinary layers pellets soaked in hot water, plus maybe a teaspoon of cod liver oil or of poultry vitamins, a few hulled sunflower seeds and a handful of mixed corn. When the water is frozen the main point of doing this is to keep them hydrated because if they are getting water in with their pellets they don't need to drink so much of the very cold/frozen stuff. Also of course they do seem to love eating warm food from a big round dish, all together, heads inwards, stuffing themselves before bedtime. Only problem is weaning them off it again in the Springtime.
What a strange time of year to be asking this, when the rest of us are moaning about the problems of keeping our chickens cool!