best brand of chicken feed?

[Chris09]

You are trying hard aren't you, lol. 16% isn't bad for a predominant "scratch grain" product I used an example for someone other than you (since they asked). 10% is still higher than 8%. He asked for higher, there's another example. You can stick to Purina,Dumor, or whatever you want to use. BTW safflower meal is considered a by-product of safflower seeds after oil is extracted, so you didn't make any revelation with that analysis.

Trying Hard?

You really need to reread things, He asked why producers didn't make a SCRATCH GRAIN with more proteins he didn't ask for a feed that contains grain it.

I know what Safflower Meal is, and how it is made, reread my post....
Here I will repost it for you;
Quote:

 

[Chris09]

from 2011
http://www.cargill.com/feed/recall/...-dumor-producers-pride-product-list/index.jsp

I know but there has been more resent ones also.
Land-O-Lakes and Cargill has been tossing back and forth the making of the TSC feeds for sometime now.
Also at times there both making feeds for TSC.

 

[seminolewind]

I like working with a local custom mill for our poultry feed. That way I can specify ingredients to include or exclude. I do buy in bulk.

I investigated a lot of different feeds before I settled on this idea.

When you get custom grain from a feedmill, what about vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and calcium? Do they mix that in too? How do you know how to order the ingredients?

As for Purina, Dumor, Seminole, Manna, and southern states and Nutrena and Country something, it's basically all the same to me and I look at it as the minimums of what they need. My sweetfeed works well for me because it's all oats whole, crimped and pelleted. I can't see using more corn for scratch because there's plenty in the feed.

It's a good sticky base and I've added nutritional yeast, oyster shell , flax one time and pearl millet one time. Also BOSS, but I wonder how they digest the outer shell?

 

[Chris09]

Thanks people! Iam going to pose my concern to our grainery expert as he is also a chicken farmer. If you put a bowl of scratch and a bowl of crumbles in front of your chickens, which one will they eat first? Ha ha.

If your looking for a good All Grain mix to use as a scratch you can use a All Grain Pigeon Mix.
They come with or with out corn, has a good mix of grains, and also comes in a number of protein percentages ranging from 11% protein up to 21% protein.

Just remember that scratch is energy source and is not meant to be fed as a feed.

One of the reasons that chicken go for the grain before the crumble is instinct, another is that chickens eat to fill a caloric need, scratch is a quick way for them to fill that caloric need.

 

[Chris09]

When you get custom grain from a feedmill, what about vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and calcium? Do they mix that in too? How do you know how to order the ingredients?

It depends on how you want it mixed.
When I had my feeds mixed I had them use a basic 40% protein poultry concentrate along with the ingredients I wanted in the mix.

 

[seminolewind]

What do they use for 40% protein?

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

When you get custom grain from a feedmill, what about vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and calcium? Do they mix that in too? How do you know how to order the ingredients?

As for Purina, Dumor, Seminole, Manna, and southern states and Nutrena and Country something, it's basically all the same to me and I look at it as the minimums of what they need. My sweetfeed works well for me because it's all oats whole, crimped and pelleted. I can't see using more corn for scratch because there's plenty in the feed.

It's a good sticky base and I've added nutritional yeast, oyster shell , flax one time and pearl millet one time. Also BOSS, but I wonder how they digest the outer shell?

Absolutely, if you're adding dry ingredients together yourself, and some of those ingredients are smaller particles, getting things to blend in such a way that every bite is uniform is difficult. The birds will for sure pick out all the cracked corn first if there is cracked corn in the recipe, and they'll be likely to leave the expensive & nutritious supplements in the trough. Chickens are incredibly good at finding "treats." You can get things to stick together by wetting the mixture with molasses, oils or water. Of course anything but water will add to the nutritional profile of the mixture, possibly in unexpected/undesirable ways.


What I don't like about adding together a bunch of different feed products for different types of animals is trying to keep track of all the ingredients in those products. Those recipes can change with each batch of feed produced at the industrial mill. Manufacturers and suppliers don't always welcome questions. I've gotten a lot of hostility and a fair amount of dishonesty while doing my research. It can be a real headache.

The feed we have custom milled for our birds is a complete feed. It has a cereal grain base, and includes several other ingredients. It is a pelleted feed, which I prefer for lots of practical and nutritional reasons and so does our feed expert. The pelleting process is great at getting the ingredients properly blended and making sure they stay that way. The pellets are also a good shape for the birds, and they will pick up pellets that fall from the feeder, so there is less waste. Scientific evidence suggests pre-grinding the ingredients makes them more nutritious for the bird.

That pelleted feed is part of a system. We offer oyster shell in separate hoppers, there is some great research available about why that is a good idea -- the research explains how the birds utilize various forms of calcium. We mix in scratch grains to adjust the protein content down for the birds that do better with less protein than is in the pellets. And we toss out scratch as treats. For the most part we buy the scratch grains individually so we know for sure what's in them and where it all came from.

I spent a lot of time researching various potential feed ingredients. I am interested in great tasting & super nutritious eggs/meat as well as super healthy birds, so wanted a feed formulated for those things. I'm absolutely not an expert, but I'm as informed as I am able to make myself.

I prefer to use a single feed that is complete enough to serve our various birds at all life stages so we don't have to buy several different types of feed. The feed nutrition expert at the mill was a great resource for making sure the feed recipe is nutritionally complete. We have both chickens & ducks, sometimes we have turkeys, and we do some breeding, so have males and young birds. All those things were taken into consideration when designing our feed.

Finally, we sell eggs and sometimes we sell meat. Most of our customers want eggs "free" of certain common poultry feed choices (that's how Americans shop for food). No corn, for example. No soy. No Canola. No GMOs. The big feed mills adjust their recipes constantly as prices of the ingredients change, so there is no way to predict or control the recipe unless you're mixing your own feed or buying from a custom mill. Our customers are also very interested in "local" and "sustainable" food, so our feed choices take those things into consideration. By using a custom mill I can give the customers solid, accurate information about what the birds eat and explain to them why we've made certain choices.

Certainly I could save a little money buying feed off-the-shelf, and thats what we used to do. I started with Purina feeds, but eventually thought the birds weren't doing as well as I wanted them to do on that and was getting really poor customer service from the farm store and directly from Purina, so switched to Payback brand for a while before I started working with the custom mill. If I had to switch back to industrial feed, I would choose Payback over Purina. Payback has a lot of super choices, but that brand isn't available everywhere.

The custom feed we buy is more expensive than brands like Purina, but less expensive than the "boutique" brands available online. And I have control of the recipe from the custom mill.

 

[seminolewind]

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/articles/ji-millet.html

I read this a few years ago and ordered a 5 pound bag of pearl millet. It's very small and I had to add it to my blend of sweetfeed with a molasses base for it to be picked up and eaten. I guess I am one of those people who feel that there is an abundance of corn in chicken feed which is good for calories. I try to find ways of not adding more corn to their diet and use other ingredients such as oats- crimped and whole, possibly flax and millet. Flax and millet are very small and don't get picked up in regular feed. Millet is 12% protein and comparable or better than corn.

I did also read an article about pearl millet being better than soybean, but I can't find it right now.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/articles/ji-millet.html

I read this a few years ago and ordered a 5 pound bag of pearl millet. It's very small and I had to add it to my blend of sweetfeed with a molasses base for it to be picked up and eaten. I guess I am one of those people who feel that there is an abundance of corn in chicken feed which is good for calories. I try to find ways of not adding more corn to their diet and use other ingredients such as oats- crimped and whole, possibly flax and millet. Flax and millet are very small and don't get picked up in regular feed. Millet is 12% protein and comparable or better than corn.

I did also read an article about pearl millet being better than soybean, but I can't find it right now.

Plain old wheat works well as scratch and it isn't super expensive. The softer white wheat is what is mostly grown around here, so that's what we use. Higher protein than corn, by a bit. You can use wheat as the cereal-grain base in poultry feed instead of corn. The one thing with wheat is that it doesn't contribute to yellow yolks the way corn does, but you can get good pigment other places.

I haven't read every page of this thread, so don't know if this link has been provided yet ... http://www.feedipedia.org/ It's a great resource.

 

[Chris09]

What do they use for 40% protein?

It is a concentrate that is 40% protein, it also have vitamins, minerals, fats, etc..

The one that I used for poultry looks like this some mills use other concentrates you'll have to ask around and see what they use.

Soybean Meal, Porcine Meat Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Wheat Middlings, Alfalfa Meal, Animal Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), DL-Methionine, Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Phosphate, Salt, Manganous Oxide, Ferrous Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Ethylenediamine Dihydriodide, Cobalt Carbonate, Sodium Selenite, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Menadione Dimethylpyrimidinol Bisulfite (Source of Vitamin K Activity), Riboflavin Supplement, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Niacin Supplement, Choline Chloride, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Folic Acid, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Thiamine Mononitrate, Biotin, Ethoxyquin (a preservative).

I liked it and it worked well, all I had to do is tell them what grain/s I wanted and the amounts and they mixed it for me and would have it ready if not that day buy 8am the next day. I knew the people at the mill well and bought a lot off of them so they worked with me.

I know Kent/Evergreen/Blueseal has a 36% protein concentrate, Hubbard Feed has a 38% protein concentrate, Kalmbach has a 20% protein concentrate that allows you to add *SBM to the mix also, Buckeye Nutrition (the one that I used) has a 40% protein concentrate. There may be others that I don't know about out there these are just the ones that I know of.

*SBM=Soybean Meal