Can food be bad?

[juliamichell]

My hen normally has layers. I just bought a very large bag of grain from a local farmer, in the shop, but very cheap, 5 euros for 10 kilos. It looks to contain crushed corn, whole barley, it is quite dusty. I think my chickens poop goes wrong when I feed it to her, even a small amount. So I am left with almost 10 kilo of grain. I fed it to the wild birds but then thought, what if it contains some kind of bacteria which harms them also? Has anyone ideas please? Should I just throw it all away? Thanks

 

[SilkieLoverFarm]

Is that your only bird that you recognized has a problem with it? Are you switching her back and forth from her normal layer feed to that feed? Have you tried mixing some of her old feed (higher ration) with that new feed? Maybe try a slow transition, see if she tolerates the change in feed better mixed with what her body is used to already...

 

[SilkieLoverFarm]

https://www.mofga.org/Publications/The-Maine-Organic-Farmer-Gardener/Summer-2003/Chickens

 

[aart]

My hen normally has layers. I just bought a very large bag of grain from a local farmer, in the shop, but very cheap, 5 euros for 10 kilos. It looks to contain crushed corn, whole barley, it is quite dusty. I think my chickens poop goes wrong when I feed it to her, even a small amount. So I am left with almost 10 kilo of grain. I fed it to the wild birds but then thought, what if it contains some kind of bacteria which harms them also? Has anyone ideas please? Should I just throw it all away? Thanks

Could be moldy.
Is is actually chicken feed?
Is there a tag showing nutritive percentages, ingredients, and a manufacturing date??

I bought a cheap bag of grain, crushed corn, barley etc. which seems quite dusty. When I fed it to chook she got small lumpy black poo with water. I think it was the food as it seemed to go away. Then when I fed her just a small amount it happened again. I am worried the food has bacteria? It does not smell bad. Should I just throw it away, 10 kilos. or could I feed it the wild birds, but I worry it might have the same effect. It came from a local farm, properly bagged and labelled but was half the price of normal grain.

I'd toss it....'cheap' isn't always 'good'.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Food can definitely go bad. But what you bought wasn't food, it was scratch grains which are to be fed sparingly. Two grains does not equal feed by any stretch of the imagination.
One of the scratch grains I buy has a lot of powder in it and I won't be buying it again. Like yours, it is cracked corn along with oats and milo. Whole grains retain their vitamin content longer than grains that have had the hull broken like cracked corn which loses nutrients quickly.
Do you only have one chicken? Is she actively laying?

 

[CindyinSD]

I switched some turkeys over to cracked corn a while back to finish for slaughter. I did notice their poop turned kind of yellow and squishy. They didn’t look like they were feeling as well as usual, so I backed off the corn and gave them also their regular food. People say birds love the corn and will gorge themselves on it, leaving their usual feed in favor of the sweeter corn. That didn’t happen in this case. The turkeys (BBWs) didn’t appear to like the corn.

While your chicken will live on just about any food you can provide for her, she will be healthier and more productive on a balanced diet. You can make your own balanced food but that requires a big investment in research on your part, to learn how to formulate the food, and a moderate investment in a grinder for at least the larger seeds, which are often the important high protein legumes such as field peas, trapper peas, etc.

 

[juliamichell]

Thank you, I am delighted with all these replies. I dont have the original label unfortunately but I dont think it printed the foods values just an address. My hen likes it no doubt and I am going to try her one more time to see as her poop has been very healthy for the past week without it. I have only one hen yes and she is laying, she lost her partner a while back, she now has a partner, so just the two. She is very tame and comes in the house.

 

[wyoDreamer]

If you truly believe that it is a chicken feed, then try using it as a treat - just a little bit every day for a week. If she does well for a week on that, try mixing a little in her feed and gradually increase the amount of the new and decrease the amount of the old feed. Put the bulk of it in the freezer to keep it from going moldy.
Is there anything on the bag at all? Even a picture of the bag or the grains in it may help determine what you bought. Where are you located?