AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

You're welcome. I'm not always helpful, just ask Petite Poulet how many of her threads I've lead astray.

If you aren't planning on getting anymore chicks and you don't want to throw away the crumble you have, and waste your money, then finish feeding the crumble to the sussex and grab some pullet grower as you need it. Bear in mind too that by the time you finish the crumble you have you might not need a large quantity of pullet grower to get them up to 16 weeks, perhaps see if the feed store does smaller quantities than a 20kg bag.

Ok after bringing home some grower pellets I can now tell the difference between everything. They are definitley still on the crumble, so I mixed my 2kg bag of grower pellets with that. I think there was a 5kg bag as well but I got the smaller one because I wasnt sure what I already had for them. I checked the nutritional value of all the food and I did notice a difference in the calcuim (grower is 1%, layer pellet/grain is 3.2 or thereabouts).

Chicks seem to be doing quite well. They are still a bit nervous and run back into the nesting box anytime it looks like someone is coming towards them, but they are coming out to feed and drink which is great. I expect it will take them a few weeks to get used to us. Hubby and I think its cute that they look like half grown chickens, but still have their baby cheep-cheeps sounds :D

One thing I have learned in my short experience with chickens, is that they LOVE strawberries. My girls go to the garden to pick some and the chickens chase them around the yard for them

Hi, MrsM,

Barastoc have a free booklet titled "The Chook Book, 8th Edition, An Introduction to home flock management" which has some great basic information and also dietary requirements from pullet starter, pullet grower, pullet finisher and then various other mature poultry feeds.

Website: www.ridleyagriproducts.com.au
Phone support: 1300 666 657

The Barastoc range also comes in 2kg and 5kg bags, check the larger pet stores/warehouses if your local stockfeeds are closed for the holidays.

H&H, the local Pet Stock had some of that information in store. I saw some of the flyers and guides regarding chicken feed and they were quite helpful. Oddly, they do not stock the pullet finisher at all and I was advised to go straight from the grower feed to the layer.

Even stranger, I spotted an empty space on the shelf of 20kg bags for a "poultry finisher", which the staff member claimed was what you feed really old chickens, and entirely different from pullet finisher. Though, I never saw "poultry finisher" anywhere on any lists of feeding guides.

Either way, I have some crumble and grower feed and will slowly give them less crumble and more grower until they are ready to go onto the layer feed. The poor things are so wary of us at the moment, they are knocking their food bowl around every time someone comes close to the coop, so I think we'll go through it pretty quickly I did have their food in a container on the ground for them, but I bought them the silver bowls that hang off the side of the coop, thinking that would be harder to knock down... but nope, it didnt last half an hour. I would get them one that hangs from the roof but they would probably end up injuring themselves so I will keep an eye on their container and restock their food when it gets into inaccessable areas.