best brand of chicken feed?

perchie.girl said:

I just stumbled on this thread and need to read it through.... before adding in my personal 2 cents

LDJ

deb

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OK read it through.... Yep I was in here about 2010....

I envy all you folks that have grain mills close to hand. The closest one for me is Modesto.... and if you want a special mix from them you have to buy 2000 lbs. But they do Organic... nice to know.

For what its worth I will still be using Flock raiser If I am forced to feed pelleted food. Just for ease and I have had good results in the past. Plus its good for all my birds with a tweak or two for different needs.

As far as having animal protien in it.... I feed Cat fish chow as a supplement... about 10 percent.

once i get my situation to the point where I can personally tend my flock (very long story) I will be doing fermented feeds. Higher food conversion... and it doesnt matter what type of feed you prefer you can ferment any of it.

Edited to add: because of the predators in my area I have no flock right now... but when I do get going again there will be NO free ranging so the reason for adding an animal protien as a supplement. Catfish pellets, Cat food, or even Mazuri or Utra kibble would be my choices.

The only reason to use scratch (chicken Crak) is to get the flock corralled. For the guineas their crak is White Proseo Millet.... (same stuff fed to parakeets)

deb

perchie.girl said:

OK read it through.... Yep I was in here about 2010....

I envy all you folks that have grain mills close to hand. The closest one for me is Modesto.... and if you want a special mix from them you have to buy 2000 lbs. But they do Organic... nice to know.

For what its worth I will still be using Flock raiser If I am forced to feed pelleted food. Just for ease and I have had good results in the past. Plus its good for all my birds with a tweak or two for different needs.

As far as having animal protien in it.... I feed Cat fish chow as a supplement... about 10 percent.

once i get my situation to the point where I can personally tend my flock (very long story) I will be doing fermented feeds. Higher food conversion... and it doesnt matter what type of feed you prefer you can ferment any of it.

deb

Click to expand...

Nice to see you, deb!

We used to do Purina Flock Raiser for all the birds except the laying flock, but when we switched to pelleted it didn't come that way and so we switched to Payback brand feeds. You can probably get Payback in your area ... I think the price point is less than Flock Raiser, and there are tons of formulas to choose from. Our breeding partner uses one of Payback's concentrates (the laying concentrate, I think) and offers all kinds of farm-direct grains/legumes on the side, which is an awesome system, IMO. We used the All Purpose Poultry Pellet, which was comparable to Flock Raiser, and oyster shell on the side. One of our two feed stores was able to order that for us.

I love "All Purpose Pellets," and that's what our new custom feed is. I think Payback offers better customer service than does Purina, and probably fewer recalls. Our birds seemed to do better on Payback than on Purina, but that could be any numbers of factors influencing that.

Now Flock Raiser comes in a pellet as well as a crumble, so there's that. But we've committed to the custom feed as that's what our egg customers prefer, and blah blah blah you know the rest.

Edited: You're right ... fermenting reduces pellets, crumbles or mash to something similar in texture with less waste. I think people using the Scratch & Peck also have better results if they feed it fermented (better distribution of the ingredients/textures). For Fermented Feed.

seminolewind said:

If you use pellets that have no corn in them , what do they replace the corn with?

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Pretty much any cereal grain will do, relatively speaking. We grow wheat here, we use that.

http://www.feedipedia.org/node/223


The rest of this post will be quoting from that link:

Poultry
Wheat grain, particularly from soft varieties, is one of the main ingredients used in poultry diets, notably in Europe, Canada and Australia (Blair, 2008). Wheat is used as an energy source due to its high starch content. It is very palatable if not ground too finely and can be used efficiently by all classes of poultry. In countries where wheat is commonly used in poultry diets, conventional broiler diets typically contain 60% wheat or more (Blair, 2008). A similar inclusion rate (60%) has been proposed for laying hens, while recommendations are slightly higher for breeders (65%) and lower for chicks (50%) (Ewing, 1997). The ME value depends greatly on the starch content and on its digestibility, notably in young birds. Starch digestibility and the ME value of wheat are highly variable (Mollah et al., 1983). This variability is attributed to kernel hardness, viscosity and the presence of α-amylase inhibitors (Carré et al., 2007). Wheat can replace maize entirely, but performance tend to be lower unless wheat is supplemented with appropriate enzymes (Blair, 2008). [that bolding is from me, -Lj]
Wheat can be used as whole grain with a concentrate complement with no detrimental effects on broiler performance and with positive effects on the digestive tract (Williams et al., 2008). Good results are obtained when wheat is coarsely ground (hammer mill screen size of 4.5–6.4 mm) for inclusion in mash diets. Wheat should not be ground too finely, as this may cause discomfort in eating (unless the diet is pelleted), increase moisture absorption and subsequent feed spoliage and reduce feed intake (Blair, 2008). Technological treatments such as pelleting and extrusion can increase digestibility but too harsh treatments may be detrimental to the nutritional value by inactivating endogenous enzymes such as xylanase and phytase (Carré et al., 2002).
The presence of soluble carbohydrates (arabinoxylans) in wheat tends to increase intestinal viscosity, affecting digestive function. For instance, viscosity affects negatively the digestibility of dietary lipids (Carré et al., 2002). In order to counter those effects, it is now commonplace to use exogenous enzymes, such as xylanase-based enzymes, resulting in higher ME value for wheat and better performance (Blair, 2008 ; Choct, 2006). Enzymes permit to increase the inclusion rate of wheat in diets without decreasing performance (Choct, 2006) and also help to reduce problems with sticky droppings (Slominski, 2011). Responses to enzyme supplementation depend on age of the bird. More mature birds, because of the enhanced fermentation capacity of the microflora in their intestines, have a greater capacity to deal with soluble carbohydrates (Blair, 2008).
Replacing maize with wheat in broiler and layer diets tend to reduce the xanthophyll content of the diet, resulting in less pigmentation of the broiler skin and egg yolk: supplementary sources of xanthophylls may be necessary when the market requires pigmented chickens and eggs (Blair, 2008).

One stylistic note in poultry feed preferences by location based on the above info: I've read that in some countries they vastly prefer eggs with pale yolks, so wheat is great for that. Other countries that use wheat as the base of their feeds like the brighter orange yolks, so supplement with various things like marigold. Corn makes yolks more "rich" looking than wheat, so that requires a little "education" with my egg customers who insist on "corn-free" poultry feed, but also want super-orange yolks ... grass is great for greening up yolks, but we have two "dormant" seasons here in Oregon (mid-summer, mid-winter).

I purchase my scratch grain mix from our local grainery. I actually know a few of the farmers who contribute the grains to be mixed. Grain may lack the much needed protein a bird needs but the grain nutrients are valuable. Chickens will eat corn mash, but corn is really a filler with little value other than filling their bellies. Yes the scratch grain I buy have a certain percentage of mashed corn filler in it but things like soy bean, wheat, black sunflower seeds and a few other grains are in there as well. I use Purina Layer Crumbles for my main feed and add 25% scratch grain to it. The layer crumbles is 19% protein and the scratch mix is 8% protein. It still adds up to more than enough sufficient protein plus adding much need nutrients and natural oils.
If and when you are processing your chickens for consumption they have a lot of fat globules, then they have too much of something in their feed causing it. All I know is that after several years of this procedure, my chickens are healthier and happier. JMO.

Isn't Purina layer feed 16%?

Yep, our store offers 2 varieties. Naturally, one is more expensive than the other.

I take it back, Purina layer is only 16% protein. I had purchased a product for meat birds at 19%. I went back to Purina.