Use a quality premium commercial feed which is nutritionally balanced to provide your hens with the correct levels of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, calcium, vitamins and minerals each day. For best egg production we recommend the minimum crude protein to be 16% to 18%. Read the label!

Make sure that you feed out the right type of feed to your chooks. Commercial poultry feeds are specifically designed for different ages and types of stock. Laying hens will do best on layers pellets not chick crumbles! Layer feed has higher levels of calcium than chick starter feed (it can also contain a coccidiostat) so if ground up and feed to young chicks (younger than 16 weeks) the excess calcium cannot be readily excreted causing chronic kidney damage. Feeding chooks the incorrect feed will impact on their laying ability.

Give your birds access to feed all day as they eat little and often throughout the day. Your birds will not gorge themselves. They are pretty sensible and eat what they need then move away from the feeder. The need to eat is controlled by their requirement for protein and energy. The more concentrated in protein and energy the feed is the less the birds tend to eat.

Invest in an automatic step-on feeder which will keep the feed secure, dry and most of all free from being contaminated by sparrows, rats and mice. (We have some great models in stock.) This allows all hens at different levels in the pecking order to get enough feed to meet their laying requirements during the day. Sparrows and other wild birds can have a big impact on the health of your chooks. They not only eat and spoil the chicken feed but they bring with them disease, lice and mites.

If using a commercial feed this should make up 90% of their diet and be a complete feed. Maize and wheat should only be fed out as a treat or a scratch feed. No more than 5g to 10g per bird per day. Please note, if additional grains (such as corn or wheat) are fed with the complete feed, then the amount of methionine consumed by the bird can be inadequate for providing growth and feather development. Feeding of additional grains with complete poultry feeds is not recommended. We recommend not mixing maize or wheat in with the pellets in the feeder. Birds tend to pick out and fill up on the treat feed first. Use only as a treat feed and scatter on the shavings in the hen house so they turn it over preferably in the late afternoon.

Don’t feed out too much in kitchen scraps. Always best in the late afternoon when the chooks have eaten their balanced pellet diet. Be sensible and selective in what you feed out. Never feed out spoiled or rotten food. Just small quantities, as much as they can clean up in 10 minutes, otherwise you might as well send out an invitation to the mice!

Grow a patch of silverbeet for your chooks and feed out the outer leaves to your penned birds so they can enjoy having some greens regularly. Chooks also love nasturtiums, clover, chickweed and turnips. Avoid feeding out mowed grass as this can cause crop bind.

Commercial feeds should have the correct levels of soluble calcium in them to meet a laying hens needs. Providing some fine poultry shellgrit separately out in the run is also a good idea (especially if they are not free range) as the grit also aids with digestion.

We recommend feeding out pellets over mash. Pellets are a complete ration in a peck unlike mash which is fine and powdery and wasteful at the best of times. When eating pellets chooks will peck at each pellet which will contain all of what they need to be top layers. When eating mash birds will often peck out the larger bits of grain and leave the dust to blow away. That dust will often contain many of the essential vitamins, amino acids and calcium all important for good production. Also the heat treatment during the pelleting process will have killed most bacteria present (eg: salmonella).

Make sure the feed you buy is FRESH and not old stock. Commercial poultry feed has a shelf life of about 12 weeks. We recommend buying a bag at a time. A laying hen on average needs app. 120 to 140g a day …so 4 brown shaver hens on commercial feed should go through a 25kg bag of pellets in app. 7 weeks. Chooks love fresh pellets and not stale ones.

And LOTS of it! Chooks drink twice as much as they eat by weight. So if your laying hen eats 120g of feed a day she will drink app. 240mls of water and even more on a hot day. Chooks drink little and often so make sure your girls have continuous access to fresh, clean water. Deprive a hen of water and it will impact on her egg production. A laying hen drinks twice as much as a non-laying hen. Use a purpose-made drinker that keeps the water, fresh and clean.

Chooks like routine so don’t chop and change their diet. Stick with a quality, reliable brand and preferably a premium pellet. Here at Appletons we use and recommend Westons Free Range or Peak Layer Pellets for your laying hens if you are South Island based and the Sharpes Hi Lay Pellets are available on the North Island. Both these brands contain animal protein in their poultry feeds.