What do commercial chickens eat

Feed should not be stored for more than two months. It is also important to keep it in a dry, cool place. Old feed can lose its nutritional value and is susceptible to mold. The manner in which a pullet is raised to sexual maturity will have a lasting effect on the productive life of the hen.

Pullets are grown to reach a certain body weight at a specific age. Many of the problems that occur in a laying flock can be traced back to insufficient body weight during the growing period.

Commercially raised pullets receive three diets during the growing phase: starter , grower , and developer. Most feed stores sell only one or two types of feeds for raising replacement pullets. Once your chickens start laying eggs around 20 weeks of age they should be switched to a layer feed. Layer feeds are formulated for chickens laying table eggs those used for human consumption. Broiler feeds are formulated for those chickens producing hatching eggs breeders.

The diets are basically the same, but the breeder diets typically have slightly more protein and are fortified with extra vitamins for proper embryo development. Laying hens require large amounts of calcium for eggshells. Laying mashes typically contain 2.

Growing chickens require only 1. If you feed high-calcium diets to growing chickens, kidney damage can result. It may also be necessary to supplement the diet of laying hens with ground oyster shell on a free-choice basis. Some high-producing laying hens may require the extra calcium that the oyster shell provides. Monitor the quality of eggshells to determine whether or not you need supplemental oyster shell. If hens produce eggs with thin shells or shells that are easily cracked, oyster shell supplementation might help.

Each year chickens molt lose older feathers and grow new ones. Hens typically stop egg production until after the molt is completed. There is considerable variability in the timing and duration of a molt. Early molters drop only a few feathers at a time and can take up to six months to complete the molt. Late molters shed feathers more quickly, over two to three months.

Previous Next. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn. Related Posts. Time to separate fact from fiction. How sustainable is chicken farming? There continues to be a widespread myth thank you Internet!

Chicken feed may also contain minute levels less than 1 per cent of additives such as enzymes and antibiotics to prevent disease and digestive problems. All of these additives are subject to strict regulations and are used in conjunction with good management, vaccination and hygiene practices. Antibiotics help to maintain healthy birds, thereby ensuring a safe food supply for consumers and to prevent any potential food safety problems.

There continues to be widespread debate within the scientific community as to the effect and impact of antibiotic use within agriculture because it is a complex interaction between food safety, animal health and animal welfare, and there remain many unanswered questions to find answers to.

Because broilers grow unnaturally fast, those which are kept for breeding — and are therefore not slaughtered at six weeks but allowed to reach sexual maturity at about weeks — have to be starved, otherwise they would become too big to mate.

The intensively produced broiler is typically kept in an artificially lit shed of around 20,, birds. Computers control heating and ventilating systems and the dispensing of feed and water. The water and feed are medicated with drugs to control parasites or with mass doses of antibiotics as necessary.

Units are cleaned only at the end of each cycle, so after two to three weeks the floor of the shed is completely covered with faeces and the air tends to be acrid with ammonia. Keeping animals in such close confinement enables disease to spread rapidly. Experts have warned that we are close to the point at which human medicine may find itself without effective life-saving drugs. In the UK, the stocking density is typically 38kg of bird per square metre — an area less than an A4 sheet of paper for each mature chicken.

Free-range and organic production insist on more space, but our typical Sunday roast chicken will have more room in the oven when dead than it had to live in on the farm. To maximise yields, farmers often overstock their sheds at the beginning of the cycle and then thin out some of the birds for slaughter because otherwise the chickens would not have enough space to grow.

Thinning — when workers cull some of the chickens, catching them by the legs — is stressful and the point at which diseases can often enter a shed. The practice contributes significantly to the prevalence of the campylobacter in flocks. Campylobacter is potentially deadly to humans and the most common cause of food-borne illness in humans in the UK, affecting more than , people a year. The neck skin of chickens is often the most highly contaminated part of the bird. Processors have now started cutting it off at the factory, which adds to costs but removes some of the bacteria load — good news for consumers, but since it was this part of the bird that the FSA was collecting for tests, the development has also scuppered the programme.

The FSA has said it remains committed to tackling campylobacter as a priority. Animal welfare tends to be marginalised in times of austerity, relegated to a luxury in the face of the need for cheap food.