Can feeding free-range chickens with chives lower farming costs?

Chives are a common vegetable in our daily lives, containing various vitamins, sugars, proteins and minerals, and are rich in nutrients. So can chives be used to feed free-range chickens? Can they lower the cost of raising free-range chickens?

1. Can chives be used to feed free-range chickens?

Chives also contain special components such as volatile essential oils, glycosides and sulfides, with a unique odor and multiple effects such as supporting yang, dispersing blood, detoxifying, killing insects and sterilizing, and are widely used in ecological free-range chicken farming.

Therefore, chives can be used to raise free-range chickens.

2. Can feeding chives to free-range chickens lower the cost of raising them?

Feeding chives to chickens can lower farming costs, mainly in the following aspects:

1. Supplementing nutrients and promoting appetite

Regularly adding an appropriate amount of chives to the flock's daily diet can supplement trace elements and help improve appetite and enhance digestive function. The chives fed to chickens should be moderately mature; chives that are too tender contain more water, while those that are too old have more crude fiber, which affects the feeding effect. In addition, Nongjiaying reminds everyone to be sure to control the proportion added; chives cannot completely replace the daily diet!

2. Preventing diseases

Scientifically and reasonably adding chives to the daily diet of free-range chickens helps improve the flock's immunity and also has an obvious preventive effect on some diseases. For example: to prevent pullorum disease in chickens, chives can be chopped finely and mixed into the feed, or the chickens can be allowed to eat them freely, 2-3 times a week (consult Nongjiaying for the specific amount); fresh chive juice with brown sugar can also be used for chicks.

3. Increasing the laying rate and the flavor of eggs

Some data show that during the laying period of hens, if a certain proportion of aromatic plants such as chives, scallions, garlic, ginger and celery is added to the daily diet, the laying rate of the chickens can be increased by about 5%-10%, and the flavor of the eggs will also be improved.

Feeding chives to free-range chickens has multiple effects such as increasing nutrition, killing germs, promoting appetite and preventing diseases, so it has many benefits! However, because chives have many pests and diseases, vegetable growers often use various chemical pesticides during cultivation to recover losses, which easily leads to relatively large pesticide residues in chives. Rural free-range chicken farmers had best grow them themselves to ensure the safety of the ingredients.

A separate area can be planned within the planting area for growing chives alone, or after a batch of chickens is sold, during the site's rest period, intercropping under the trees can be carried out. On one hand, chives like fertilizer and can make good use of the naturally fermented chicken manure under the trees; on the other hand, chives grown by oneself are not sprayed with pesticides or applied with chemical fertilizers, meeting people's requirements for high-quality vegetables. Whether selling the chives externally or feeding them to one's own free-range chickens, they are excellent!