On Monday, June 23, 2003, at 05:10  PM, Ingrid Bauer/Jean-Claude Catry
wrote:
> what seeds ? I am looking into having chickens now and procrastinate
> about
> it because i want to find a source of good organic  whole seeds . do
> they
> like lentils ? peas ? when i had them in the past i was sprouting
> local oats
> and barley for them .a friend tried to quit supplementing them and
> they were
> producing very little eggs.
> I saw somewhere also that grains were disturbing their hormonal
> balance and
> was the reason they were producing lot of eggs . so it looks to me that
> aiming at a big quantity of eggs is not healthy for us to eat them .
>

The two biggest factors controlling how many eggs a chicken will lay
are genetics, and nutrition.

Top producing breeds will lay one egg every day for most of a year.
They usually wear out quickly and die young. Other traditional breeds
lay a single clutch of eggs, perhaps twenty or so, then stop to brood
them. Meat producing breeds will grow and grow and not lay any eggs
till they are completely adult, and very large size. They usually lay
fewer eggs.

Your best bet is to buy one of the traditional egg laying breeds, not
the latest ultramodern egg factory chickens. In fact, it is a lot more
fun to have a mixed flock, with a dozen different breeds all laying
different sized, different colored eggs. Let a few roosters live to
adulthood, and mix the genetics around a little. In the long term your
flock will be healthier than if all your birds are genetically
identical.

As to food, chickens are omnivores, they will eat anything from meat to
bugs to fruit to seeds. I have seen chickens chasing wounded pigs and
pecking the bloody spots. I also saw a chicken trying to catch a
butterfly, the chicken was running wildly, jumping up as the butterfly
dipped down and fluttered up again and again. I just about bust a gut!
f you have a big space the chickens will scrounge enough food to live
and produce a few eggs, but to get lots of eggs they need lots of
nutrition. Grain is a very good food for chickens because they are
natural seed eaters, and can digest raw grains. If you don't want to go
that route, you have to find some other high energy food to give them.
Can you get waste fat or oil from somewhere? But if you are worried
about omega 3 content in the eggs you have to control which fats they
eat. Eating wild bugs and seeds etc there is probably no problem, but
what do they eat in the winter? Chickens can't forage in the snow :--)
So you have to feed them SOME high energy supplement.

One thing you might try is alfalfa, dry pellets or even fresh. It will
give the eggs a pretty yolk anyway, and lots of nutrients, but not much
energy.