Game Cock Conditioner = much less poop?

[chickengeorgeto]

Chris09 and some of the other posters are correct. In the Back Yard Chicken feed bizz, the first order of business is to successful capture the hearts and minds of the backyard chicken enthusiasts. Many of these people are new to agriculture and so it is easy to sell them a bill of goods. All the bad things that many of them they have been brained washed about concerning food , but especially meat are just wrong, and I think they are criminally wrong.

I would like an explanation of why one would grind the whole grains in this chicken food even if they were feeding bantam chickens. If your birds pick too much of the tasty junk out of your feed your obviously feeding too much at one time. Excuse me but I must ask who is keeping who. Are you the boss of your flock, or are your chickens in effect keeping you? Feed less at a time until they clean it up FAST or mix in enough oats, pellets, red wheat, and barley to extend the booster ration enough to make them clean it all up before you feed more.

I don't thank that a bantam chicken should have any problem scarfing down a whole corn kernel. I have seen my week old chicks do it even if they had to try and try again to pick up the corn kernel in their little beaks just so.

Also remember that the test for total digestible protein chains is a test for Nitrogen. Excess Nitrogen can give a false protein reading, (in that it may not be a complete protein) but excess Nitrogen never the less can and will result in runny poops and certainly smelly manure as the excess Nitrogen is expelled in the droppings and decomposes, resulting in ammonia. I am sure all of you have driven past a broiler house on a hot Summers day and had your eyes tear up from the ammonia smell. Relax, its just the excess protein or Nitrogen in broiler chicken feed becoming one with mother nature.

 

[Sonya9]

I would like an explanation of why one would grind the whole grains in this chicken food even if they were feeding bantam chickens. If your birds pick too much of the tasty junk out of your feed your obviously feeding too much at one time. Excuse me but I must ask who is keeping who. Are you the boss of your flock, or are your chickens in effect keeping you? Feed less at a time until they clean it up FAST or mix in enough oats, pellets, red wheat, and barley to extend the booster ration enough to make them clean it all up before you feed more.

I have recently integrated a couple of pullets, one of which showed signs of Mareks and is/was being treated and recovering. It is very important that she eat well and not be pushed away from the food by the older birds. I do try to feed her separately once or twice a day however I will not limit rations and force them to eat it all quickly; even with 3 dishes some would end up getting far less.

As to your question, who is the boss, that would be me. I decide how best to feed my animals and if I want to grind up their food for easier consumption I will.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Game chicken breeders, who this feed is marketed to, often raises long before sunrise to inspect his or her chickens' night droppings. Often picking them up to test the feel and consistency by gently mashing and rolling their poops between thumb and forefinger. There is no better way to be absolutely sure that your chickens are eating, and throwing their feed and that they are in fine fiddle, than carefully manually manipulating and inspecting your chickens' poops.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I have recently integrated a couple of pullets, one of which showed signs of Mareks and is/was being treated and recovering. It is very important that she eat well and not be pushed away from the food by the older birds. I do try to feed her separately once or twice a day however I will not limit rations and force them to eat it all quickly; even with 3 dishes some would end up getting far less.

As to your question, who is the boss, that would be me. I decide how best to feed my animals and if I want to grind up their food for easier consumption I will.

Remember, all my young game chickens were always raised in a full free range situation or as much as I could make their environment free range. I even went as far as paying neighbors X numbers of dollars for each young cockerel or pullet that they could raise to young adult hood with myself supplying the juvenile chicks. I did this to reduce the germ load that my growing birds were exposed to. I would never knowing keep a suspected Mareks chicken because if it did survive, then I had to pay to raise a useless animal, that is sort of like buying a three legged race horse.

Second good farm based runs or walks were very hard to come by 50 years ago and they are non existent in this day and age. Why then would I nurse a Mareks chicken and contaminate my natal rearing environments or PO the chicken growers I depended on by giving them sick chickens to raise. Chickens who would just up die on them or else have to be culled once I got them home?

In a broiler house the most necessary piece of equipment is a killing stick. It is a short length of broom handle carried in ones back pocket while working in the grow out house. It is used to quickly and humanely kill any ailing broiler before he or she transmits their germs to every chicken in the broiler house. Remember that the chickens on a commercial chicken farm are the property of the integrator, that's companies like Perdue or Tyson, and the chickens are not the property of the farmer who only provides the housing and labor. It is therefor almost impossible to earn a profit if you nurse unthrifty chickens that don't even belong to you in the first place, and a sick chicken is an unthrifty bird. I am sorry, but because the integrator pays a nice bonus if the farmer-raiser beats the integrators' projected feed usage, a commercial chicken farmer has little interest in giving the integrators baby chickens holistic treatments like green tea enemas or hypnosis psychotherapy.

In your case your home and hearth is not at stake but if a commercial chicken farmer looses a whole batch of chickens to Mareks then the processor or integrator will likely never ever again trust that farmer with a new batch of baby chicks. In this case in about 6 months the farmer will be foreclosed on because of a lack of income. Likely he and his family will never scrape enough capital together to get back into farming.

I am sorry if I didn't get my thoughts clearly presented but often one must walk a mile in someone else's shoes to realize where they are coming from.

 

[Sonya9]

In your case your home and hearth is not at stake but if a commercial chicken farmer looses a whole batch of chickens to Mareks then the processor or integrator will likely never ever again trust that farmer with a new batch of baby chicks. In this case in about 6 months the farmer will be foreclosed on because of a lack of income. Likely he and his family will never scrape enough capital together to get back into farming.

I guess commercial farmers had best be careful then.

With Marek's it is not about "one sick bird", it is a herpes virus and if one bird in the flock has it they have ALL been exposed. I have had it in my small flock for a while, and many many other breeders in this area ALSO have seen signs of it in their flocks. Many believe breeding birds for natural resistance is the only real answer.

My birds are pets that provide eggs, the vast majority are very very healthy however if an injury or stress overwhelms a particular bird for some reason the Marek's appears to rear it's ugly head. I am not nursing the sick pullet with green tea or hypnosis, I actually tried a human antiviral drug for herpes and it seems to have worked very well. Time will tell if the bird's immune system can stay strong and keep the virus in remission.

 

[centrarchid]

Energy density? Protein and energy level of flock raiser much higher possibly overloading birds ability to process formulation? Most commercial diets to my knowledge have been formulated for chickens bred for more intensive production. Such birds have a higher capacity and need for nutrients than backyard chickens and gamefowl.

 

[Chris09]

I have recently integrated a couple of pullets, one of which showed signs of Mareks and is/was being treated and recovering. It is very important that she eat well and not be pushed away from the food by the older birds. I do try to feed her separately once or twice a day however I will not limit rations and force them to eat it all quickly; even with 3 dishes some would end up getting far less.

As to your question, who is the boss, that would be me. I decide how best to feed my animals and if I want to grind up their food for easier consumption I will.

There is not treatment for Mareks disease.
If the bird is recovering it is most likely that it could have had one of the many other diseases or deficiencies that have the same signs as Mareks.
Lymphoid leukosis, botulism, a deficiency of thiamine or a deficiency of Ca/Phosphorus/Vitamin D can have the same signs as Mareks.....

 

[Sonya9]

There is not treatment for Mareks disease.
If the bird is recovering it is most likely that it could have had one of the many other diseases or deficiencies that have the same signs as Mareks.
Lymphoid leukosis, botulism, a deficiency of thiamine or a deficiency of Ca/Phosphorus/Vitamin D can have the same signs as Mareks.....

Marek's can go into complete remission naturally and birds have recovered.

As far as their being "no treatment" we shall see, I am trying antiviral meds that specifically target the herpes virus (which Marek's is) and it appears the treatment has worked. The meds stop the herpes virus from infecting new cells so hopefully it will cause the disease to go into remission until the chicken's immune system is strong enough to keep it in check once again. I realize there is no "cure" as once exposed birds always carry the virus but that doesn't mean they can't thrive and live normal lives.

Quote: http://msucares.com/poultry/diseases/disviral.htm (Mississippi State University)

 

[Chris09]

Marek's can go into complete remission naturally and birds have recovered.

As far as their being "no treatment" we shall see, I am trying antiviral meds that specifically target the herpes virus (which Marek's is) and it appears the treatment has worked. The meds stop the herpes virus from infecting new cells so hopefully it will cause the disease to go into remission until the chicken's immune system is strong enough to keep it in check once again. I realize there is no "cure" as once exposed birds always carry the virus but that doesn't mean they can't thrive and live normal lives.

Remember that Marek's is the herpes virus GaHV-2 which is different than the herpes virus that humans get...
Also just because your bird "looks" cured doesn't mean that it is..
It just means that you have just covered up the signs of the virus and your bird will in time die from the virus also your birds will still infect birds that come in contact with your birds.

You do what you want to but the best thing to do is dispose of the bird properly so that no other birds get infected, mainly other peoples birds.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I guess commercial farmers had best be careful then.

With Marek's it is not about "one sick bird", it is a herpes virus and if one bird in the flock has it they have ALL been exposed. I have had it in my small flock for a while, and many many other breeders in this area ALSO have seen signs of it in their flocks. Many believe breeding birds for natural resistance is the only real answer.

My birds are pets that provide eggs, the vast majority are very very healthy however if an injury or stress overwhelms a particular bird for some reason the Marek's appears to rear it's ugly head. I am not nursing the sick pullet with green tea or hypnosis, I actually tried a human antiviral drug for herpes and it seems to have worked very well. Time will tell if the bird's immune system can stay strong and keep the virus in remission.

There is not treatment for Mareks disease.
If the bird is recovering it is most likely that it could have had one of the many other diseases or deficiencies that have the same signs as Mareks.
Lymphoid leukosis, botulism, a deficiency of thiamine or a deficiency of Ca/Phosphorus/Vitamin D can have the same signs as Mareks.....

I must agree that the only long term solution to Mareks Disease looks to be immunity. The problem is that a chicken must be exposed to the Mareks virus but not become infected in order to be sure that immunity has been conveyed. Not culling an infected bird won't result in the chicken breeder getting any closer to an immune flock.

Currently there is no test for Mareks and I don't expect that a Mareks test would be approved by the USDA or the FDA because of the likely hood that birds that have been successfully vaccination would test false positive. If this was the case then the vaccination program could have a negative impact on poultry farmers as so called "humane" originations would likely use spurious testing to further scare the consumer away from wholesome chicken.

I do think that cooking your chicken kills all pathogens. This is just a little factoid that the so called humane originations conveniently overlook.