What vitamins are needed for laying hens for egg production

On the territory of many private farms one can see such a pastoral picture: white, red, black and motley chickens are grazing on green grass. In order for the henhouse to be cheerful, healthy, and fresh homemade eggs were delivered daily to the owners' table - you need to take care of the correct bird diet, providing the chickens with complete nutrition with vitamin supplements.

Why chickens need vitamins

Any poultry farmer who has been breeding poultry for quite a long time knows that vitamins come in natural form to chickens with vegetables and herbs. And in winter, the supply of vitamins is limited, and poultry farmers add them to food so that the chicken family does not hurt.

Prudent and thrifty owner is engaged in the preparation of vitamin mixtures in the summer. To do this, the collection and drying of nettles, green stalks of amaranth. Vitamins in the diet of the bird give it resistance to viral diseases, to the main diseases of birds (feather loss, viral diseases, cannibalism). When fully fed, chickens and in winter, closed housing, will be healthy birds.

List of essential vitamins and their values ​​for the body

It is possible to increase the egg production of chickens at home in the winter only by adding to the feed artificially obtained nutrients, in the summer they can be obtained from both grated vegetables (carrots, beets, Jerusalem artichokes) and shredded green mass (nettle, dandelions, clovers). You need to understand exactly what vitamins are required for birds in different periods of life.

Vitamin A - birds need it from the first days of life. They begin to give it to chickens from the second day after hatching from the eggs (mixed with drinking), this contributes to the normal metabolism. A signal of its lack in laying hens are eggs with a light yolk and dry cornea of ​​the eyes.If vitamin A is enough - the eggs will be large, and the yolk is bright yellow.

Vitamin D - the first sign of its deficiency in the body: a thin, soft or completely absent egg shell. In the summer, birds receive this vitamin from sunlight on free grazing. With winter content, the lack of it leads to such a disease as rickets and bone deformation. To compensate for the lack of this substance, the bird is fed yeast and hay flour, which were irradiated with ultraviolet light.

Vitamin E - is in sufficient quantity in germinated grains (sprouts) of corn, wheat, legumes, vegetable oil and dairy products. Its absence in the feed causes the appearance of sterile (not fertilized) eggs. It is useless to lay such eggs in an incubator or put them under the hen - the chickens will not hatch from them.

Vitamins B1, B2, B6 and B12 - it is possible to provide the chicken herd with these vitamins by adding cottage cheese, beans, beans, soybeans, grains, bran, fish meal to the diet. B vitamins are responsible for the mucous membranes, the endocrine and digestive systems. Their deficiency in the body can cause egg laying difficulties in chickens, diseases of the muscles and skin, insufficiency in the feather cover and soft claws.

Of course, it is impossible to rely only on ready purchased vitamins, they should be added to food for birds and in the form of dry crushed eggshell, crushed dry nettle, slaked lime powder and fine sand. These components are ground, mixed in equal proportions and two or three times a week are put up in a separate container in the poultry house for feeding to chickens.

Normal fresh yeast is a supplier of vitamin B, they can be added by a teaspoon to the total weight (1-2 kg) of grated feed. Twice a week, regular fish oil, bought at a pharmacy, is added to the food of little chickens. Fish oil contains vitamins A, B and D, it can be added to fine grain feed.

Foods that contain the necessary vitamins

It is better for an inexperienced poultry farmer to consult with experts in advance or to study the relevant literature on the preparation of a ration for laying hens.Particular attention should be paid to the winter diet of poultry, as an insufficiently balanced diet can have a bad effect on egg production.

Cereals

Coarse and partially crushed grain - - This is the basis of the chicken diet. The most valuable feed for chickens are corn and wheat, in these grains there are a lot of various nutrients (cellulose, carbohydrates, proteins, minerals).

Wheat can be fed to the chicken herd as a whole, and corn should preferably be passed through a crusher. Wheat flour is also included in the chicken ration, but it should be added to food mash consisting of boiled and raw chopped vegetables.

Protein food

Plant and animal protein is the main building material in any living organism. Have a good host chicken get proteins in the form of dried, chopped herbal, cake, cottage cheese and whey, fish or meat by-products, remnants of food from the table man.

If the chicken herd is contained precisely for the production of eggs, then fish additives in poultry feed should not be abused, eggs may have an unpleasant smell of fish.

Bean grains

If birds are raised for meat (broilers and chickens), they need to include legumes in their feed. It can be:

• beans;
• beans are black and white;
• soybean;
• peas;
• lentils.

All representatives of legumes have a very hard and dry shell, so before adding beans (beans) to chicken feed, they are soaked for 8-10 hours in cold water, then boiled over low heat for 30-40 minutes. Grains swell and become soft.

Mealy feed

Almost any grain is suitable for chickens, reluctantly they peck only oats. To conveniently mix grain feeds with other ingredients (vegetables, vitamins, minerals), the grain is ground into flour. It is in the form of flour from the grain in the body of the bird that the fiber is well absorbed. In the composition of any well-balanced feed the main component is flour.

Mealy feed can be made from:

• wheat;
• barley;
• rye;
• corn;
• amaranth;
• soy.

Roots

Chopped fresh and boiled root vegetables will help increase chicken egg production at home. As soon as grated fodder or sugar beets are added to the feed mixture, in addition to grain, bone and grain flour, this will affect the quantity and quality of eggs laid by layers in a few days.

The careful poultry farmer makes a stock of root crops for the winter to enrich the chicken diet in the winter. For this fodder or sugar beet lay in storage in trenches or piles dug in the ground, covered with a canvas canvas on top and sprinkled with a layer of soil 30 cm thick.

They love chickens and potatoes, but potatoes It is impossible to feed the birds raw, as in its skin, when stored in an insufficiently dark room, the toxic substance solanin can form.

High content of solanine in potatoes can be seen with the naked eye - the skin will be greenish. Such potatoes are generally not suitable for human consumption. For chickens, potatoes are boiled, kneaded hot and cooled as part of mixed wet foods.

Minerals

When chickens are in closed housing (or in winter), not only vitamins but also minerals should be added to their feed. Mandatory in the chicken diet phosphorus and calcium. It is very convenient to add minerals to the feed mass: you can buy them in finished form in stores of veterinary products, and you can make such additives yourself.

For these purposes ground chalk, long-extinguished lime, shells, dried egg shells. Supplements such as phosphates and iodized salt can be added to drinking water for poultry. For pecking chickens in a bird aviary set capacity with small gravel, pebbles help the birds in the digestion of food.

When included in the feed of long-extinguished lime, it is necessary to ensure that the period of quenching with water of this mineral does not exceed six months, since all useful components will disappear from it. Lime before serving necessarily mixed in equal parts with river sand and mixed.

If a eggshell, which is fed to chickens, from purchased eggs, then it must be calcined for 15 minutes in an oven at a temperature of 180 ° C. Together with the untreated shell, viral diseases can be introduced into the hen house.

Additional nutritional supplements for laying hens

So that the number of eggs laid does not decrease, hens are added to food fish and meat and bone meal. A very useful supplement for layers is flour from coniferous branches. To make it, ground coniferous branches are ground in a shredder-crusher. The resulting coniferous flour is added to bird feed at the rate of: 5 grams of flour for each chicken. All three types of flour food supplements are a valuable source of vitamins.

The use of artificial vitamins

With all the efforts of farmers to make poultry food balanced and nutritious, it is not always fully possible to provide it with natural vitamin supplements.

The most reliable way to preserve chicken livestock in the conditions of winter (closed) content - is the addition of artificial vitamins to the combined feed. The path to the successful cultivation of poultry goes through a balanced combination of natural and artificial vitamin supplements to feed.

Complex vitamin preparations

In veterinary medicine developed special vitamins for laying hens. These are vitamins for good egg production, designed specifically for poultry in winter housing. Here are the most popular preparations containing concentrated vitamins in liquid form:

"VITVOD" - a preparation with concentrated vitamins that can be dissolved in water and to be fed to chickens or injected subcutaneously with the help of injections. It is intended to eliminate hypovitaminosis, facilitate the molting of poultry, and it helps well in reducing egg production.

"VITTRI" - this is an oil solution of vitamins A, D3, E. The diluted drug can be administered intramuscularly or it can be given orally to the bird. These vitamins increase the survival rate of day-old chickens, contribute to the prevention and treatment of beriberi and rickets, are used during outbreaks of infectious diseases in the poultry house.

Foods that should not be fed chickens

Laying hens increase egg production when feeding boiled fish until the bones are softened. Calcium contained in fish increases the thickness of the shell and reduces its fragility. But we should not forget that there are products that should not be fed chickens at all, or should be given in small quantities. These products include:

• dining beets;
• salty fish;
• raw fish.

Even boiled fish can be given to chickens no more than once or twice a week, as this food causes great thirst, and dehydration of the body can cause difficulties with defecation in birds. In addition, the smell of eggs laid by hens will be unpleasantly fishy.

From root vegetables it is undesirable to give hens table beets. It is the red beetroot that works as a laxative, and chickens can get sick. Vegetable juice colors guano in an unnaturally red color and this causes a flash of cannibalism in the chicken herd. It is best to feed the fodder or sugar beet with light pulp.

Based on the experience of practicing poultry farmers, it is safe to say that the egg production of chicken herds depends on more than half the nutrition. And only to a lesser extent, the productivity of the hens depends on the breed of hens. It is a well thought-out chicken diet with a sufficient content of vitamins, minerals, root crops, vegetables, grains and legumes that will make the chicken content profitable and cost-effective.