hello, newbie here - I've got myself an ark......

[tlck9]

my ranger is the best of the bunch so far, as she is the only one that will interact with me, but it is early days (only 2 days in)

Quick question:

I am putting around 4oz of food down per chicken per day - they are eating around 1/2 of this (which equates to two semi full chinese plastic take away dishes!

What do you do with the balance when you take it up at night? throw it or re-use it next day???

[MaureenHall]

Unless it's been pooed in, or got well rained on, my lot get the food topped up. I don't throw it away unless it's really manky

[HayleyB]

I have two hoppers one is huge, fill them to the top when getting empty the two lasts nearly 2 days.

[tlck9]

Also another quick question if I may;
At the moment i'm putting down their layers pellets in the morning in a feeder. I usually add some greens to the run whatever is going spare, lettuce, rocket, etc

I then have a cup of Super mixed corn which I put in a little red cup attached to the side of the run.

Is this right and if it is do I need oyster shells as well, I was told that the super mixed corn had grit in it, but do I need anything else as well

[Flummery]

I would only offer corn (just a handful between them) in the evening. I mix this with grit - both stone and shell grit and scatter it in the run. It's natural for them to scratch around for grit and corn. It also means they've filled up in the day on their pellets and only have a little corn as a treat at night. Our breeder likened corn to doughnuts. Lovely but fattening!

[HayleyB]

Mine have free fed pellets, day and night, early afternoon they have greens and so on then evening a scoop of corn to go to bed with. Winter my routine changes and they will get warm porridge in the evening with stuff like sunflower seed and anything else to hand mixed in.

[tlck9]

my chucks moved into their new run today, a 9ftx6foot ish run which houses their ark, so they have the ark, the floor under the ark and the run to move around in.

I shall post some pictures shortly

I'm hoping they like the new run....

They seem quite content in their little run, just wandering around, however as I let them out into the big run, my leghorn sort of karate kicked one of the others...is this normal behaviour

[Bramble-Poultry]

yep - when combining to groups of hens, they naturally have a pecking order in each group, now they have to sort that out all over again as they interact with the other group!

be pepared for the odd spat spit and fight for a couple of days until they sort them selves out.