scratch

My children found a baby chick on your porch. I'm assuming one of our cats brought it home. It does have a scratch, but it's scabbed. The baby is eating, drinking, and will not accept being alone. We already have flock raiser from having ducks and will get medicated food. I'm just wondering what...

Hello everyone! Long time since I've posted but I have a question for anyone that might know what's going on with an eye of one of my white embden geese. I noticed a couple months ago something was up with his (Guardy)'s eye but I don't know what. It doesn't seem to impair him at all but it's...

I hope this question makes sense. I'm newer to chickens and did not grow up in a family that had them. On BYC, and in real life, I have heard people say that their grandparents didn't feed their chickens any commercial feed, but simply threw the flock a small amount of grains/scratch such as...

Hi, I have been using chicken feed that I buy from the local farmers auction. It contains maize, sorghum and sunflower seeds. I also bought the same stuff at a local store that sells animal stuff. My run is divided into 3 sections and there is a small amount of grass, weeds and bugs for them to...

Hi all, I have a small flock of 1 EE that is 7 weeks old, and 7 BO's that are 4 weeks old. They have been living in their coop for just over a week now. During the day they have access an outdoor covered run, and at nights are in the coop. Am I ok to start feeding them treats like mealworms...

There are many local or indigenous chicken breeds on the planet that have never been fed commercial fully formulated feed. Scratch and scraps are used instead of fully formulated feed. a) What happens to the metabolism of these breeds? b) How will their metabolism change if they are fed...

I may be new to BYC, but I wanted to share my findings. My mom is severely allergic to wheat, so when we got our birds, we decided to feed them an all gluten free diet. I did hours and hours of research, trying to find layer feed, chick starter, and scratch that was completely gluten free. It...

I’ve been feeding my ten chickens 1/2 cup of scratch in the evenings since last fall when it was quite cold at night. I’ve continued this spring, unless it was to be over 50 degrees in the evening, simply because I still have some left over from the bag I purchased. My husband noticed that...

I'm very new to raising chickens. I did research for over a year before I got my first chicks a little over a week ago. I've tried hard to educate myself as well as possible to avoid any obvious pitfalls, but I am still fuzzy on some of the lingo. Today's question is: What exactly qualifies as...

Question: Any tips/recipes for making organic chicken scratch?

Question: Can you get Organic Oyster Shells? If so, where? I try to sell chicken eggs and people seem to like that I organically feed my chickens. Whether it is a fad or not. Any advice? Recommended brands?

hi, I’ve got a 20kg bag of scratch - I’m looking to make my own blocks for my 6 chickens. Is there any easy recipes on what to do? Does anyone have any idea what I need to do to bind it together and what extras I need to put in for flavour and nutrition? Thanks

When the food is chicken scratch (low-density expensive feed), a heritage breed like minorca, australorp, sussex, plymouth rock, campine overlays by far a commercial brown layer. When the food is layer feed (high-density expensive feed), the brown layer becomes the queen, but the others lay good...