Official BYC Poll: Do you change your chicken feed in the fall to prepare for winter?

[Nomadicus]

Here this far south it rarely gets cold enough to worry. I feed the same starter grower to the flocks year round and withhold scratch a couple of months during the hottest part of summer.

 

[TLynne1]

As the days get shorter and the weather cools, our chickens’ needs begin to shift. Many chicken keepers adjust their flock’s diet in the fall to help them stay healthy and strong through the winter months. But how about you?

Do you change your chicken feed as fall approaches, or do you stick with your usual routine? Let’s find out! Share your feeding strategy by voting in the poll and see how others prepare their flocks for the colder season!

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Further Reading:

• Caring For Chickens in the Fall
• Molting: All You Need To Know
• Important High-Protein Foods for Chickens During Molting
• Coop Health: Designing & Maintaining A Healthy Coop

(Check out more exciting Official BYC Polls HERE!)

This will be my first winter, so I don't know. I did notice they are he weather changes. I'm here for the comments so I know what to do if anything. Attached is what I'm feeding them now. I mix them

 

[ChookaPete]

My chickens get the same mixed grain in one feeder box, the same layer pellets in another feeder box, and they free-range across two big grassed yards.

All I change is the frequency that the water bowls get flushed out by the hoses on electronic tap timers - once every few days rather than a few times each day.

 

[Loving my girls]

I keep to the same feed.
The only time anything changes is when one or more of them start to molt. Then I add a tonic to their water.
However …
Occasionally if the weather is really bad I have to admit to giving them porridge with sunflower seeds and anything they might like that I have in n my cupboards (sweetcorn, the odd crushed walnut)
I have lots of very small plant pot saucers and I put some in each one and then hide them in the barn for them to find. That’s where they go when the weather is crummy.
Yeah I’m a sandwich short of a picnic as my nanna used to say

 

[TLynne1]

I

I keep to the same feed.
The only time anything changes is when one or more of them start to molt. Then I add a tonic to their water.
However …
Occasionally if the weather is really bad I have to admit to giving them porridge with sunflower seeds and anything they might like that I have in n my cupboards (sweetcorn, the odd crushed walnut)
I have lots of very small plant pot saucers and I put some in each one and then hide them in the barn for them to find. That’s where they go when the weather is crummy.
Yeah I’m a sandwich short of a picnic as my nanna used to say

Just give them.more food because they seem to eat more. I also give them a snack twice a day that includes a lo
t of Mealworm. They love it!