Solitary chicken - need advice

[Tinkerbell]

Can anyone tell me if pellets and mash, in fact any type of dried food goes off. Can food containers be toped up or should they be emptied and refilled with fresh food.

 

Thanks

[Christian]

Pellets and mash shouldn't go 'off' if it is kept dry. The use by date refers to the vitamins deteriorating. The food is still ok to feed them, but with less vitamin content.

 

Ii usually wait until my feed bin is empty before topping it up

[Gallina]

I wouldn't mix the contents of two sacks. I do a ritual cleaning of feed containers and my jug whenever I start a new sack, so there is no risk of ancient feed hanging about indefinitely.

 

Otherwise I wouldn't be too worried. "Best before" means just what is says. Add on a month, and it would be "Still pretty good before".

[jomaxsmith]

I tend to empty and wash my grub every week and replace with fresh food as otherwise my hens leave a small amount of the 'dust' bit of their mash every day and if I just kept topping up it would all be 'dust' eventually!

 

I do mix sacks of food if I'm changing them from one type to another (i.e. standard to organic) to get them used to it but if it's the same sort I don't bother.

 

Jo

[Gallina]

My hens have pellets, and I put them through an old sieve now and again, because they produce a lot of dust. I suppose if I wanted to be very economical I would catch the dust to make them porridge occasionally, as there is an awful lot of it, especially at the bottom of the sack.

 

There's nothing wrong with mixing sacks of the same age. I just like to have a clean start when I start a "younger" sack, and being a bit of a slob it is an incentive to wash everything properly.

 

I once got flour mite in my flour because I used to tip in the new bag of flour without washing out the container first, and this has made me wary about mixing new and old anything.