Peacocks

[HeidiHill]

I have had my chickens for just over a week. They are rescues so had them on crumble as advised by the rehoming charity. I was just using old cat bowls and loaf tins until my New Eglu Cube feeders arrived. They seemed to be eating just fine after a couple of days so introduced pellets slowly and they seemed weary but were still eating, although probably around the pellets and just the crumble. Once my Omlet feeders arrived, I used the same mix of crumble and pellets and showed them where the food is but they don't seem to be eating at all! I've only ever seen one of them actually eating but even she doesn't eat much. I'm worried they will starve themselves! I don't want to give in and get more crumble as it's such a mess (and need to use pellets for worming so need them to get on them!). What can I do? I'm actually wondering if they know those are feeders even though I've shown them, they don't seem interested. Surely they must be hungry!

[Beantree]

They won't starve themselves Heidihill. We changed one of our feeders to a 'trigger' unit (because of the sparrows) and it took 2 weeks for them to work out how to use it. I used to go into the run and show them how it worked once a day, so really they ate almost nothing in that period.

I would stop the crumble completely and just use pellets. Perhaps try pellets in a dog bowl on the floor? You may be right about the new feeders; they don't recognise them yet.

[michela]

Yes I'm having the same happening with my new ex-batt hens. They don't seem to recognize the new style feeder as a feeder. I persisted, but after a week they still didn't cotton on, so I temporary got out the regular hanging feeders mainly because I needed to get them wormed. Now that's done I will make the change back to the new style feeders and see how it goes. They were too weak to risk just leaving them to work it out when they first arrived, now they are stronger and more settled. Fingers crossed it works this time as I invested in 2 new feeders and 2 waterers, which was quite an outlay for a small domestic set-up.🤞