The most important thing in raising chickens for eggs is choosing the right breed. Chickens vary from below fifty eggs per year to around 300 or so by the breed. That's best case scenario. Second thing to get good egg production is day length. You have to supplement light to keep the chickens laying year round. Third is proper feed. That can be as fancy as you want to get or as simple as laying pellets.
Found it !!!! Damn I paid more for my layer feed! Glad to see you are fermenting your feed. It takes longer for me to ferment now cuz it’s colder outside. What I’m super excited about is your larvae farm!!!!!
We do almost everything you suggested, except de in the food. I might add some split peas to their mix next time I make a batch. Great tips that will keep your chickens very happy. Also note that if roosts aren’t higher than nest boxes, the girls will sleep in the nest boxes because they feel safer up high. Great video. Well done.
My chickens are very very spoiled. So I constantly need to change their menue… Like grinded corn, carrots, nettles, salad, just very little fruits. And they love nuts… Peanuts 🥜 or sunflower seeds…the good stuff. I make them incredibly crazy ‚party platters‘ 🤣 But they are tiny Seramas and even wintertime and snow we have eggs. 😊 my neighbors don’t 😜
Found your channel through your Edit channel. As a chicken momma too, we find letting the chickens free range really helps, as well as lots of oyster shells in their feed. I think we'll give the DIY mix a go though, as it is certainly cheaper than 40 pound bags of feed! Worms are a big thing we give ours, so I'm also interested in the fly bin.
Hey Sven, I thought it better to comment here on chickens instead of in the film class! I used to have chickens, each hen would produce an egg a day! White Leghorns or RhodeIsland RedsI only fed them mash with water in the morning, the rest of the day they could roam the garden, scratching up the compost/insects. Super healthy with big red combs.
My chickens have only been laying eggs for about 3 weeks now. Out of 12 chickens they're up to 6 a day now. I put a light in their coop at night. I'm giving them warm food sometimes, before bedtime. I give them grit and they just ran out of their calcium, so I'm going to give them ground egg shells. I'm hoping they'll continue to give me eggs through the winter.
I keep the egg shells and smash them into micro pieces inside a bag ..add them back to the feed, free range them also and give them boiled barley...I might try buying the whole grains too as my chickens ignore layer pellets, they love corn, sunflower seeds and anything seedy
A year later I've honed it to a mixture of 5 cooked grains Wheat, barley, sorghum, crushed corn and rice, plus raw black sunflower seeds ...I cook up enough for a couple of weeks and keep it refrigerated
and it seems that an added diet of ACV activated charcoal (biochar) is great for the calcium buildup in the chickens to give the eggs a harder shell and improves the health of the chickens.......an idea I read on line from Africa.....
With the economy the way it is with increasing food prices every week, I would be hard to invest that kind of money into equipment for 7-8 hens, although I am going to try the special grain mix and the fermenting. I'm getting 0-3 eggs a day. Not enough for our 3 families living on our farm. Was thinking of buying more pullets but with my hens being under 2 years old it seems a bad idea. The hens have a HUGH chicken run with voluntary grasses. They also get table scraps. They are free fed lay pellets. I had a nest box for each one but they insist on all laying in one or two of them. I actually think they wait in line, lol! Found one egg on the floor in front of the main nest box! Silly birds, but I love them. I do have a very old hen that lays green eggs. She is free range plus her food dish always has lay pellets in it. She's houses at night with a Bantam hen, they are pals and roam together. Both lay well. It's the main flock that dilly dallies around with egg production. Could you recommend a grinder for me? Thank you! Love your beautiful hens!
This was a very helpful video. I'm just curious about the overall time investment in preparing the new feed vs. the old feed. Even if you save money on materials your time is worth something isn't it? Perhaps factoring that it might lessen your overall savings.
Hi . I'm so glad I came across this video. You have just confirmed my theories. Fermented feed is far better and bsf farming can really help increase protein intake. Do you perhaps have a compost corner for the stuff that doesn't go into the bsf bins . Thanks again and God bless you brother
I keep reading to feed the chickens mealworms or BSFL in very limited/small quantities, like a spoonful a day, for each hen, because it could damage their liver or kidneys or whatever because of their high protein content. Do you think this is true?
I found DIY fly larvae boxes/traps here on RU-vid. The one that seems to work best is a combo plastic tote box & PVC pipe-to-milk-bottle setup. No link Themtube deletes them anyway.
Just buy chicken scratch..it has all the same ingredients but i pay $13.00 for a 50 lbs sack..and crumbles at 16% i pay $15.00 for 50 lb sack....cheaper at a feed store then the headache of ordering your supplies
Maybe I missed it, but could you please show me where you can get the magnetic door to open at night. I am interested in that. Thanks for your time in advance, and great video!!!
Organic chicken feed???? Corn is organic along with wheat,bean,rice, sunflower.......I believe u paid for the word organic and have the same feed I have for half the cost.
So I see the Modesto milling bag on here and I think you live around Modesto as well, but then I realized on the link you provided for feed they sale the Modesto milling feed on there. Just to let you know Modesto milling has everything you listed and cheaper direct.
My mother in law has chickens. I'm in Cali right now with her. With 12 chickens (4 littles that are learning and just now old e other to Start laying eggs) I've gotten 2 eggs all day. She has a chicken (maybe more) that does peck the eggs and eat the yolks. I'm gonna show her this and see what she thinks. Ty for your FREE time and FREE advice!
Try sprouting wheat for about 3 days until the roots are about as long as the wheat seed add this to your soaking feed. Volume of sprouts to your other soaked feed about 10% to 15%. Another tip again sprout the wheat spread out into a tray water a couple of times a day until the wheat grass is about 2 to 4 inches then give to chickens complete with the root matting😊
Wow... I just found out that fly maggots were very benefecial to chicken.. thanks I have tried feding it to them..ill go get some more maggots in the banana spoilage dumpsite in the banana packing plant near our place..
If your he s are only laying 2 to 4 eggs a week you got the wrong chickens for laying😂. Barred rocks will lay quad that amount golden comets lay even more . Really your choice of chicken for laying eggs matters if my barred rocks slow down i add hot peppers to their diet. The purpose is to ward off parasites. Bam they go to laying like crazy again
REMEMBER: You CAN make 🐔lay more eggs in many way. BUT, just like HUMAN ♀️, we are BORN w/ all the eggs in our body we will EVER have. So if you force eggs out by all that work, or adding light in winter, ur 🐔's will run out/slow way down of eggs far sooner than if you let nature run it's course. Up to you. Either way, you'll get a certain # of 🥚s. It's kinder to let them live and lay naturally & get the rest they deserve.
It’s not about “forcing “ them to lay more eggs. It’s giving them proper rest and nutrition to support a healthy chicken. This is in no way bad for the chickens.
This helpful.. thanks. I do commercial laying with Isa brown. I affirm with the extra calcium and protein, to avoid using bone calcium and to replenish protein during molting and feather loose. Also, I ensure they get the maximum amount of light a day, btw 16 to 18 hours light per day. It also helps to stimulate egg production. Great video
