Cat Food??

[KathJ]

Following on from the moulting problem I'm currently having with one of my girls I thought I'd increase their protein with cat food as this appears to be a common recommendation on DTL. Is there anything that I should particularly look for or avoid or should anything fishy be OK? Don't know much about cat food

[Willow]

I use fishy cat food - my ladies absolutely love tinned sardenes in oil too.. mealworms, dried or fresh are a protein boost too x

[Mad Chick]

I think you're supposed to get the paste type cat food rather than the chunks in gravy type stuff... and obviously not chicken flavoured.

I always worry with cat food as someone once told me that pretty much all of them (including the fishy ones) contain some chicken. I've never actually looked at the ingredients to see if this is true though so I just give tinned sardines, tuna or scrambled egg to up their protein.

[Chookaholic]

i give cat food with fish in ... as well as sardines in oil mashed which they relish , mealworms , sunflower hearts, chopped peanuts (unsalted), cooked chicken , scrambled eggs

If i leave the back door open for more than a second theyre in and eating the cats food in jelly and nicking their biscuits too: they think its an all you can eat buffet

[pepi]

I buy a bag of frozen White Fish pieces or fillets in Tesco - its their own brand - in the fish freezer section - cheap as chips - there are about 6/7 fillets in the bag. I stick them in the freezer, then take one out when needed, stick it on a plate in the microwave for 3 mins, let it cool, mash it up and stand back as hen GOBBLES it up in seconds. Pure unadulterated protein!

I havent tried the sardines in oil - sounds good though - the cat food to use is the PATE type - but as others have said earlier, the contents of these tinned cat/dog foods is highly dodgy in most cases.

[chookmike]

You won't find the ingredients listed Mad Chick - they are not required to do so and therefore wouldn't list what's in there! When you choose a fish, duck, beef, lamb etc notice that the headline ingredient is always prefixed by the word 'with'

They will all contain chicken but it is a good way of getting rid of the millions of tons of organic waste from abattoirs, fish and chicken processors.

Our hens seem to have doubled their pellet consumption and halved egg production of late. This is their second winter and they are having minor moults so should I be worried?

They all look fabulous and seem to have given up fighting at long last.

Monsoon conditions here this afternoon but all snuggled up in straw now...

Have a good weekend all

Mike

[KarenE]

Hi Mike

Sounds about right. They'll be taking in extra pellets for energy to get them through the colder longer nights and their moult. Egg production usually drops as the nights draw in anyway, and with them moulting they'll be really slowing down.

[chookmike]

Thanks Karen - it seemed obvious but we always think about what's going on up there, don't we.

I can't remember which helpful Laner suggested what appears to have been the solution to the bullying but I have put up a screen across the middle of the daytime secure run - just a bit of chipboard with a couple of stakes into the ground. It stops the bullies always having the victim within sight and 'out of sight, out of mind' seems to work. The victim has plenty of room to run either way round the screen and so is never trapped.

We feed two containers in the rain too, one either side which helps food fights too. When it is dry I spread supper all over the place to get them scratching and hunting for it. Just to prove me wrong we had 4 eggs from 5 hens today including a massive 101g one. Bumble hasn't laid for months but we don't mind - she has a forever home here and pays her way by her lovely nature and strength of character and sits on all the other's eggs to keep them safe. Maybe we'll see one of her huge white eggs in the spring.

Mike

[silverback]

Maggots (undyed!)

[Stef]

We add protein with chickpeas - or any tin of beans/pulses that is going out of date. They love butter beans.

Ours too are having mini moults and egg production is a bit hit and miss. But they seem happy enough with the occasional extras they get :)

[saint-spoon]

I think that what you have to remember is that the majority of birds are omnivorous opportunists (obviously with some exceptions… you wouldn’t feed a penguin broccoli), chickens being no exception; they have evolved to handle a wide range of foods. Pet food is an off-spin of our own food industry, the bits we don’t eat goes to make pet food, this may include beef cattle that have failed screening for TB which can not go into our food chain. If you g00gle “what is in pet food” then you will get lots of articles from organisations that are probably not giving you the full story (PeetA and so on) and there have been some worries in the USA recently after dogs became ill and died (we have tougher regulations in the UK… why do you think we don’t see white dog poo anymore?). The pet food thing has come up before on the lane, what you have to remember is that pet food is a by-product of our own food industry and as such the animals were farmed, if you are going to use fish please try and use ones that are sourced from sustainable stocks and harvested in ways that do not destroy the environment. We only have one planet, if we kill it we have nowhere else to go.