Laying feed, was re: HELP !!

Jill wrote:
cheree wrote:


My chickens free range, and get much of their food that

way, but in addition to the 15-acres with abundant plant life, I throw
them kitchen scraps, AND supplement their food with a good laying
feed.


Actually its the laying feed that gives them their nutrition for production, and the rest of it is the supplement.



What is it in the laying feed that is important? It's a relatively new invention (compared with the keeping of domestic chooks) so at some time someone must have worked out what the vital egg-producing substances were, within their normal diet which would have been kitchen scraps, grain and whatever they found around the property. Were there more flies, maggots, mice i.e. protein than in today's ultra-free range scratchings?

I suppose in earlier days the fowls were kept for meat as well as eggs and were left to sit on eggs when they felt like it so a new bunch of chicks was always coming along, and when a hen stopped laying she became dinner rather than being a non-functioning productive unit. Breeds selected for maximum feed-conversion into eggs, must have required more predictable composition of their food intake. That's very clumsily put, hope you know what I mean.

A L P

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