If you notice that they are not eating as much, reduce how much you are giving to them. When you first start serving your chickens fermented feed, give them their regular portions and see how they do. Fermented feed is packed with nutrients that your chickens now have access to and have an easier time digesting. You will notice within the first week or two that you will not need to serve as much feed to your flock. IT WILL STRAIN THE LIQUID OUT INTO THE GROUND. You'll also get the free download 25 Ways to save money raising chickens.YOU CAN POUR FERMENTED FEED STRAIGHT ON THE GROUND. Want information on raising chickens sent right to your email weekly? Click right here to join my list and get new posts sent directly to you the day they're published. Keeping things stored the right way will help keep any infestations to a minimum. Where there is food, vermin will find a way to help themselves. While finding bugs in your chickens feed can be quite unpleasant, it's definitely not the end of the world. We have a problem with bears so our feed needs locked up. Be careful leaving feed outside overnight as it could attract wildlife. This should be less of a problem in winter, but leaving feed bags in your car overnight while temperatures are below freezing should also kill any bug eggs that may be present. If you buy small amounts of feed, you can pop the bag in the freezer overnight to kill any eggs that may be inside. You can dust a little Diatomaceous Earth inside the feed bin the help kill off any weevils that may be present. The tighter the seal on the feed container, the less chance of bugs spreading if they do manage to get into the feed. I also have airtight bins for each different type of feed that I use. I use a big rubber garbage can for layer pellets. The older the feed is, the more chance that any bug eggs inside will have time to hatch and multiply. To prevent bugs: Use feed in a timely manner or don't buy more then you will need in a few months. Keep stored away from other feed to prevent infestation of other bags of feed. If you choose to keep using feed after you find bugs in it, put it in a garbage bag and close tightly. Had the bugs been inside the feed tub, I would have needed to bag it up securely so the bugs couldn't get out and spread to other feed. In my instance the bugs were limited to 1 jar of scratch. This keeps the bugs from spreading at your place or the feed store.Ĭheck remaining feed for bugs. It's a good idea to put the whole bag inside a garbage bag and tie it shut before you return it. If you just bought the bag and there are bugs take it back! Do not risk it sitting around and maybe spreading to any other feed you have. Return brand new bags of livestock feed to the feed store. It would be more likely for them to eat the bugs in a feeder but again, it's up to you. They probably ate very few bugs since it was all over the ground. In my case I threw the scratch out into the yard and the chickens came running. Chickens eat lots of bugs anyway, in fact chickens will eat just about any kind of bug they find. Neither of the feed bugs I mentioned are bugs that will hurt the chickens. If it's not spoiled you can choose to feed it to your chickens or not, it's up to you. Throw the feed away if it smells funky at all. A bad or foul smell could indicate mold or bacteria. Ok, so we found bugs in the chickens food now what do we do? First smell the feed. Their larvae kinda look like grubs.little ones. Sometimes you'll see the larvae instead or a little bit of webbing hanging on the sides of the feed container. Basically they look like tiny gray moths. The Granary weevil burrows into the kernel and lays its eggs inside where it then hatches.Īnother common feed bug is the Indian Meal moth. If you look closely at the grains you can see holes through them. The bugs used the chicken feed as a food source and multiplied. Actually I had, but this one jar always sat on the back porch and since we don't feed much scratch in the summer it sat there for several months. Normally in this amount of time I would have went through the whole bag. It takes awhile for eggs to hatch and the bugs to mature. Most likely the bugs came in the scratch feed when I got it. So how did the bugs get in there, and why did I not notice them before? (I filled this container back in winter) Read on for answers. Yuck! Now the weird parts: nothing appeared to be crawling when I looked into the container of scratch and it was a closed watertight plastic jar. Then I decided I needed a picture, so I grabbed the phone and more chicken scratch and waited for it to start crawling again.
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