by Texan (1973)
It seems that quite a number of people have written their method of feeding their fowl, and a few comments on the general care of their penned fowl. Country walks are nonexistent in this area and the few I was able to find were not satisfactory. This forced me to pen walks and I treid quite a few before I was satisfied.
My basic feed for my penned fowl and hens of the yard was the same, but varied a little. I used 1/3 clipped white oats, 1/3 good scratch feed, 1/3 laying pellets, plus 10 percent calf manna. In the summer time, 1/2 oatsm 1/4 scratch feed and 1/4 egg pellets, plus 10 percent calf manna; quite frequently (about twice a week) I substituted 10 percent rabbit pellets for the calf manna, due to their high alfalfa content. About twice a week I put cod liver oil over the grain feed until it glistens when you stir it with a stick. I never liked the smell of cod liver oil on my hands, but Lava soap will remove most of the odor. I used this cod liver oil especially during the moult, but also the rest of the year. The shiny plumage, red heads and slick feet and general well being made the extra work worthwhile.
Oats are a must in my feeding, and I mixed a little in my broiler mash for my young chicks. When about 10 days old I used medicated broiler mash from start to finish on my young ones, and like the way they did. I wormed my fowl, but never did that as frequently as I should have.
My space was limited and I found by experience not to raise any great number of fowl and had very little sickness or loss of fowl. I violated that rule one year and it cost me dearly. I found it was better not to raise my chicks on wire for when I put them on the ground; they had no resistance to disease. It is better to lose the chicks (if you had to) at an early age of one to three weeks, than three months as you have very little invested in them at that time.
If you have plenty of grass in your yards you are fortunate. I did not so I fed lettuce leaves two or three times a week and fed the penned cocks smaller pieces. To make sure the hens on the yard cleaned the leaves up, I would leave the leaves in several boxes under shade trees, by night the boxes were bare. This also prevented the lettuce from getting dirty. It was quite a sight to see several hens in the boxes and of course every so often they would have to fight a little. I kept the spurs sawed off my hens. Fortunately, my hens did not all have spurs. I never did agree with the theory that your hens had to be spurred to produce good pit cocks. They did produce more blinker hens on the yard than I liked.
I never bred hens that were vicious and fought all of the time. Both my hens and brood cocks were selected for good disposition as well as good conformation. "Like father, like son" as the old saying goes, and that is where your manfighters come from. I did not keep any manfighters, for you are fooling yourself. The ones I have seen fight turned on their handlers when hurt in the pit. The final touch to the above statement was the time when a friend and I fought one together and when he turned on his handler and got killed, the price of that lesson was $40 plus the two years in raising that cock. The mother of that cock was mean and excitable and her son took after her. Needless to say I disposed of all of them. Life is too short to put up with a manfighting cock and when that happened my red headed grandpa came to life in me and disposed of him.
In feeding mt penned cocks, I used a snuff can (that used to sell for a dime) and this twice a day. This can held 1 3/4 ounces of fed per cock, per day. If a cock left any feed I cut the feed down the next time around or gave him none at all if too much was left on the ground. It was hard to tell that for the sparrows cleaned it up in short order, so I had to check when I got through feeding the last cock. I usually fed a known slow eater first, so that I could check on him when I finished feeding the others.
