Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (25 page)

From the crop, feed trickles into the
true stomach
(the
proventriculus
), where enzymes break it down further. It then passes into the gizzard (the
ventriculus
), or mechanical stomach. The
gizzard
consists of strong muscles surrounding a tough pouch filled with small stones or grit that the chicken has swallowed for grinding up grains and other hard feedstuffs. Chickens that eat only processed foods — such as chick starter or layer pellets — don’t need grit. But chickens that eat grains and other hard substances do need grit to grind up their food and make it digestible. Chickens that have a place to scratch in dirt generally pick up all the natural grit their bodies need; chickens in confinement must be fed grit as a dietary supplement.

From the gizzard, feed passes into the
small intestine
, where nutrients are absorbed. Between the small and large intestine are two blind pouches, called
ceca
, that have no known function — they may harbor beneficial microbes that aid digestion, in addition to the microbes populating the small and large intestine. The large intestine, or rectum, is relatively short and absorbs most of the water from the digested feedstuffs.

The large intestine ends at the
vent
, or
cloaca
, where a final bit of moisture is absorbed before wastes leave the body, expelled in the form of droppings. In a healthy chicken, feed passes through the entire digestive system within 3 to 4 hours of consumption.

A healthy chicken has a two-part dropping. The firm brownish part on the bottom is feces. On top is a smaller white part, which corresponds to a human’s urine. A healthy chicken doesn’t excrete urine but expels blood wastes in the form of semisolid uric acid, called
urine salts
or
urates
that appear as white, pasty caps on top of droppings. In addition to these frequent droppings, the ceca empty their contents two or three times a day, producing smelly, pasty droppings without the white caps.

DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

A chicken’s normal feeding behavior is to peck and swallow. A chicken that gets hold of something tasty that’s too big to swallow may pick it up in its beak and start running. Other chickens will give chase. One of three things happens next, reminiscent of a football game: the first chicken drops the piece, and another bird grabs it and runs; one of the others takes the piece away from that chicken and keeps running to stay ahead of the pack; another of the chickens giving chase catches up with the lead chicken and they engage in a tug-of-war.

Food running
is so instinctive that baby chicks do it. A chick that finds a worm, for instance, may grab it and start running, thus attracting the others to give chase. Toss a cooked spaghetti noodle into the brooder, and the chase is on. The purpose of food running is supposedly to break up something large into pieces small enough to swallow. I’ve seen lone chickens find something to eat, grab it, and run. Sometimes they stop and shake it apart, but other times the act of running attracts far-away chickens to come give chase. In the case of, say, a chunk of apple or a piece of bread, the chicken that first grabs it is so busy trying to get away from the others that it may never get so much as a taste. The bird would have been far better off to attract less attention by quietly pecking off pieces small enough to swallow.

But let’s say an unfortunate mouse attempts to cross the chicken yard and is grabbed by a quick-thinking chicken. In the course of food running, the mouse is
torn apart and several chickens share the bounty. So food running does serve the purpose of breaking up too-large food items for sharing, provided the chickens are careful in selecting what to run with.

Tidbitting
is a mother hen’s act of breaking up a food item into pieces small enough for her chicks to swallow, but in contrast to food running, the hen remains at the spot where she found the food item and sounds the food call to gather her chicks. She’ll then repeatedly pick up and drop the large piece, which might cause small pieces to break off, and also draws attention to the piece to encourage the chicks to peck at it. She might even hold the piece in her beak while the chicks peck at it.

A cock tidbits as a ploy to gather hens around him. He may or may not have actually found something tasty to eat. If not, as soon as a hen comes running he’ll switch tactics and begin his courtship dance.

Head shaking and beak beating
are other ways a chicken breaks up food. The bird picks up the food item in its beak and either shakes it or rubs it on the ground to break off pieces.

Ground scratching
stirs up the soil to bring up seeds, insects, worms, and bits of grit. Baby chicks scratch instinctively. When I start newly hatched chicks, I initially put their feed in a shallow tray where they can find it easily. As soon as they scratch in the feed, scattering it out of the tray, it’s time to switch to a chick feeder they can get their heads into but not their feet.

Feeding behavior includes cleaning particles of food from the head and beak, which a chicken does by scratching its head and beak with a claw. It may also clean its beak by wiping it on the ground. Beak wiping serves the additional purposes of keeping the beak sharpened for pecking and worn down to prevent the ends from growing so long or out of balance the bird can’t peck properly.

A chicken living under natural conditions — meaning in the jungle — enjoys a widely varied diet that furnishes an array of vitamins, minerals, protein, energy, and everything else a chicken needs to remain healthy. Confined chickens still have the same basic nutritional needs, which may be provided by a judicious combination of commercially available or home-mixed rations, grains, sprouts, table scraps, greens, and various supplements.

Early formulations of rations developed for chickens in confinement fell short of providing all the necessary nutrients. The formulas were initially tweaked to resolve nutritional issues and then to push for better performance: faster growth
of meat birds and better egg production from layers. At the same time methods were sought to reduce feed costs, and one way to do that is to incorporate agricultural wastes. Stick your head in a freshly opened bag of commercial chicken feed, and you might not like the odor.

In most rations, corn furnishes energy and soybean meal supplies protein. Soy meal has come under increasing scrutiny for reasons having to do with such things as solvent residues left after the oil has been extracted and inherent properties of soy that cause it to inhibit the absorption of other nutrients. You’d be hard pressed, however, to find commercial rations that don’t include soy meal as the main source of protein.

Rations for chicks contain a high amount of protein. As birds grow they gradually need less protein and more energy. Commercial rations are therefore formulated according to age and include chick starter ration, grower ration, developer ration, and lay ration. Meat birds have their own formulations for starter/grower ration and finisher ration intended to induce rapid growth. Layer ration may be available with different levels of protein, the higher levels used during hot weather when hens tend to eat less and also to improve the hatchability of eggs collected for incubation.

The variety of choice you have in rations will depend on where you live. In many areas developer, finisher, and breeder rations are not available, and lay ration comes in only one protein level. You’ll have more choices if you live in an area where chickens are numerous. If you’re really lucky you’ll have a mill close by offering superior and freshly mixed rations. Commercial rations come in three basic forms:

Mash
is feed that has been ground to various degrees of coarseness but is still recognizable so chickens can pick out what they like. It is most commonly available at a mill that does not have the necessary equipment to extrude pellets and is also the typical form of home-mixed rations.

Pellets
are made from mash that has been compressed; each pellet has an identical nutritional value so the chickens can’t pick and choose. The other advantage to pellets is that if they get dropped on the ground (as they tend to do around feeding stations), they are likely to be picked up and eaten. Their disadvantage is that chickens can quickly satisfy their nutritional needs and then have nothing to do, and bored chickens pick on one another.

Crumbles
are crushed pellets. They are fed to chicks that aren’t yet big enough to swallow whole pellets and to mature chickens, so they take longer to eat and therefore are less likely to become bored. The main disadvantage of crumbles is that any spilled or dropped on the ground is usually wasted.

Exclusive of housing, feed accounts for 70 percent of the cost of keeping chickens, so it’s only natural to look for ways to keep the cost down by mixing your own. Doing so also gives you better control over the quality of your chickens’ diet.

The chief disadvantage to a home-mixed ration is that the chickens can pick out what they like. Furthermore, formulating rations is the most complex aspect of poultry management and isn’t something to take lightly if you’re just starting out. Ration formulation requires the following:

Availability of appropriate feedstuffs

Analysis of feedstuff composition