Homemade Chicken Feed Recipe--How Does This Sound?

[HobbitWife]

Hi Everyone,
Thank you for your feedback. We eventually decided not to mix our own feed. For anyone reading this in the future, who may be in search of a budget- friendly solution, here's what is working for us now: we give them a 50/50 mix of Scratch and Peck brand layer feed and Big Sky Organics layer mash. Our hens always have access to the dry food in the coop, and we also ferment some feed overnight (since it's pretty warm right now, overnight is sufficient) and give it to them outside first thing in the morning. They love the fermented feed (of course, we always check for mold, etc.) and it really seems to help stretch our supply. We've also noticed they're laying better, and the eggs are bigger!

 

[notachickennut]

Nix the oat, corn (they can't eat whole corn), lentils, peas (you can't feed dried legumes to poultry) and sesame seeds are too fatty.
You're not going to save money or have healthier (at least with this formula) chickens with homemade feeds entirely.
There are not nearly enough amino acids , and vitamins or minerals in this, just straight up carbs.
You can develop your own scratch but don't futz with feed.

Erm, our chickens LOVE cleaned Whole Corn. We feed 1:4 (cup:chicken) ratio to our chickens all winter long. Who said you can’t feed dry legumes to poultry? They need to come tell our flock to stop eating them, we mix in dried split peas along with old dry beans. We started out fermenting them with a mixture 50/50 All Flock and Eggstra Layer but, one time my husband forgot & they just gobbled it up. We also toss leftover cooked rice, pasta, etc. from our dinner table.

 

[allenw]

I would have to dust off the old feeds and feeding book to get a good answer on how good of feed the recipe would make. I don't see a lot of the problems brought up in the comments on the feed.

 

[saysfaa]

Erm, our chickens LOVE cleaned Whole Corn. We feed 1:4 (cup:chicken) ratio to our chickens all winter long. Who said you can’t feed dry legumes to poultry? They need to come tell our flock to stop eating them, we mix in dried split peas along with old dry beans. We started out fermenting them with a mixture 50/50 All Flock and Eggstra Layer but, one time my husband forgot & they just gobbled it up. We also toss leftover cooked rice, pasta, etc. from our dinner table.

"...Raw Or Uncooked Dried Beans: These contains phytohemagglutinin (among other things). This is a toxin that affects a number of species in addition to chickens, including humans. In chickens, eating just a few raw or dried uncooked beans could cause poisoning. Red kidney beans contain the most of this toxin out of all the beans, but others contain the toxin as well and should never be fed to chickens....."
https://opensanctuary.org/article/things-that-are-toxic-to-chickens/

And
"...Kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is an annual herbaceous plant which produces a major grain legume consumed worldwide for its edible seeds and pods. It is a highly variable species with bush varieties which can get to be 20 - 60 cm (8-20 in) tall. P. vulgaris produces white to purple flowers which once pollinated, give rise to one pod. It's pods appear as thin, green, black, yellow or purple pods which can be cylindrical, flat, straight or curved. Each pod contains 4 to 12 seeds which vary in color.

P. vulgaris are native to Central Mexico and Guatemala. They were taken to Europe by the Spaniards and Portuguese who also took them to Africa and other parts of the Old World. Now they are widely cultivated in the tropics, subtropics and temperate regions.

Toxic components
P. vulgaris contain lectins which are toxic to poultry if ingested without cooking prior."
http://www.chickendvm.com/poisonous/red-kidney-beans

The second website has references to some of the research that proved the toxicity of kidney beans

Some kinds of raw beans have less lecthins and/or different kinds and so are less toxic.

Cooking them makes them edible for people and chickens.

 

[allenw]

Good information saysfaa on beans.

Peas and lentils are seperate plant families from each other and beans, cow peas are seperate from the others also. As far as I know all three can be fed without cooking.

 

[notachickennut]

"...Raw Or Uncooked Dried Beans: These contains phytohemagglutinin (among other things). This is a toxin that affects a number of species in addition to chickens, including humans. In chickens, eating just a few raw or dried uncooked beans could cause poisoning. Red kidney beans contain the most of this toxin out of all the beans, but others contain the toxin as well and should never be fed to chickens....."
https://opensanctuary.org/article/things-that-are-toxic-to-chickens/

And
"...Kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is an annual herbaceous plant which produces a major grain legume consumed worldwide for its edible seeds and pods. It is a highly variable species with bush varieties which can get to be 20 - 60 cm (8-20 in) tall. P. vulgaris produces white to purple flowers which once pollinated, give rise to one pod. It's pods appear as thin, green, black, yellow or purple pods which can be cylindrical, flat, straight or curved. Each pod contains 4 to 12 seeds which vary in color.

P. vulgaris are native to Central Mexico and Guatemala. They were taken to Europe by the Spaniards and Portuguese who also took them to Africa and other parts of the Old World. Now they are widely cultivated in the tropics, subtropics and temperate regions.

Toxic components
P. vulgaris contain lectins which are toxic to poultry if ingested without cooking prior."
http://www.chickendvm.com/poisonous/red-kidney-beans

The second website has references to some of the research that proved the toxicity of kidney beans

Some kinds of raw beans have less lecthins and/or different kinds and so are less toxic.

Cooking them makes them edible for people and chickens.

Ok, again someone might need to come tell our chickens they shouldn’t be eating this. They are all healthy, laying like crazy and still gobble up the fermented feed. I can say we’ve never fed uncooked red kidney beans but, dried green beans, black-eyed peas, etc. and whole corn get tossed into the buckets for fermenting.

 

[Pegasus667]

Nix the oat, corn (they can't eat whole corn), lentils, peas (you can't feed dried legumes to poultry) and sesame seeds are too fatty.
You're not going to save money or have healthier (at least with this formula) chickens with homemade feeds entirely.
There are not nearly enough amino acids , and vitamins or minerals in this, just straight up carbs.
You can develop your own scratch but don't futz with feed.

My chickens eat whole corn all the time they love it.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Better to go with J Rhodes than Garden Betty, whose feed recipes reveal an utter lack of knowledge about chicken nutrition. Not sure where she populated the info in her calculator from either - it doesn't agree with other sources. If the numbers haven't been "fudged", they've been cherry picked.

Best practice to cook beans, peas, and legume "seeds", or otherwise heat treat them. In small quantities, the toxins function (mostly) to block other nutrient absorbtion, making the overall feed less effective, but as quantity increases as a proportion of overall feed, the effects become increasingly pronounced. Except phytotoxins, those are light reactive toxins straight up, but the dosage is again a key function of the severity of the effect.

There is a 2,000+ year old wisdom, "the dosage is the poison". Still true.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Better to go with J Rhodes than Garden Betty, whose feed recipes reveal an utter lack of knowledge about chicken nutrition. Not sure where she populated the info in her calculator from either - it doesn't agree with other sources. If the numbers haven't been "fudged", they've been cherry picked.

Best practice to cook beans, peas, and legume "seeds", or otherwise heat treat them. In small quantities, the toxins function (mostly) to block other nutrient absorbtion, making the overall feed less effective, but as quantity increases as a proportion of overall feed, the effects become increasingly pronounced. Except phytotoxins, those are light reactive toxins straight up, but the dosage is again a key function of the severity of the effect.

There is a 2,000+ year old wisdom, "the dosage is the poison". Still true.

follow up, 'cause there's no reason to place any trust in an anonymous internet voice (mine or Garden Betty's, though she has slick Youtube videos and a nice web site). Using Feedipedia, I built (partially) a calculator I'm still working on, using generally accepted average feed values. It needs more work, particularly an "as fed" correction (which will reduce the end value of any feed I put into it to account for moisture content), and some improved tracking of certain vitamins and other trace nutrients.

I've tested it with representative recipes from old feed books, like this one. I've tested it with feed recipes offered by the governments of developing countries. The numbers it spits out are pretty close to the expected result - close enough to be accounted for by small disagreements over the nutritional value of the inputs.

Commercial feeds, and the research, generally places feed desires for economical production of healthy chickens for commercial purposes between 16-20% protein, around 3.5% fiber, around 3.5% fat. (There are some pretty broad ranges on fiber and fat, depending on breed, season, and some other factors - but I've not seen recommends over 5% fiber, or 7% fat in any source, that for maximizing CX weight at 8 week processing, NOT for a healthy bird) There are also targets in amino acid profiles, particularly for hatchling birds, which are important.

From my calculator, J Rhodes recipe (or what purports to be J Rhodes recipe) is 20.05% protein, 4.12% fiber, 3.68% fat and has a remarkably good amino acid profile (because of the fish meal - without it, the recipe fails). While those numbers don't represent "as fed", we can use them as a decent base line for comparison.

Garden Betty's feed recipe, using the same calculator, is 15.8% protein, 8.1% fiber, and 14.1% fat. The amino acid profile, something she doesn't discuss, misses accepted targets on three of the fur most critical limiting amino acids - the one it does hit is the one most literature suggests can be ignored, becuse if you've gotten the first three right, its almost impossible to miss the fourth with a typical mix.

How about her no corn, no soy mix? 15.08% protein, 8.72% fiber, 14.75% fat - its someohow even worse than her first recipe. So, marginally, is the amino acid profile.

Do those numbers represent "as fed" conditions? No. Most of the ingredients in these recipes are dried to around 90% dry matter, so "as fed" nutritional values would be expected to be about 10% lower. Are they open to adjustment due to differences in the quality or individual character of the ingredients? Yes. Are they nevertheless useful for comparison? I believe so.

You are free to draw your own conclusions.

 

[nuthatched]

My chickens eat whole corn all the time they love it.

Whole dried? I should have clarified, the *will* eat it but they can't really digest it well, not that it matters, corn is pretty devoid of nutrients. It's just carbs.