2nd opinion needed - replacing wheat with rice?

[U_Stormcrow]

^^^ Perris and I disagree with some fruequency, but variety and moderation are an area where we, the science, and most others find common ground.

It is an ancient wisdom which just happens to be true.

 

[CanadaEh]

@CanadaEh OK, barley... I had a separate thread a while ago about barley and somehow I got the impression it is not better than wheat?
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/barley-vs-wheat.1484117/
Barley has more calcium than wheat, slightly lower protein levels, definitely lower amino-acids and very high on fibre.

depends what "better" is. I found barley is bulkier than wheat, but not as bulky as oats, i.e. 55lb of wheat is half bag volume, barley - 2/3 bag, oats - 3/4 bag. Being bulky I can feed it free choice and they won't overeat eat it as they did with wheat.

 

[Maiahr]

I was able to find wheat with 11.38% protein and 29.59% wet gluten (whatever that means) and I will not buy corn. For the record - Cockspur grass has 11.13% protein and is 1/2 the price of wheat, so I may go for Cockspur grass as a main grain and add wheat. I am not concerned about calcium as I add it regardless of the grain. I am not so sure about rice anymore...

 

[Maiahr]

I was able to find
Sorghum - more protein than wheat but less amino acids.
Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) raw - more than 20% protein (I will be soaking it), and
Green peas dried raw with 22-29% protein. I will be soaking it as well.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

I was able to find
Sorghum - more protein than wheat but less amino acids.
Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) raw - more than 20% protein (I will be soaking it), and
Green peas dried raw with 22-29% protein. I will be soaking it as well.

Those peas sound good. Peas are a regular part of local grown chicken food here as we don't really grow much in the way of soy beans.

 

[raingarden]

I was able to find
Sorghum - more protein than wheat but less amino acids.
Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) raw - more than 20% protein (I will be soaking it), and
Green peas dried raw with 22-29% protein. I will be soaking it as well.

I saw an open bag of dry split green peas in the feed store and bought five pounds just to see what it was about. The birds wouldn't have anything to do with it and not one of them would eat it. Mixed with their other ration they would pick out every morsal except the peas. I soaked it but no-go. They wouldn't eat it boiled either.

So, I bought some special Rhizopus fungus starter culture and followed the directions to make an Indonesian dish called tempeh. I was the weirdest thing. You mix the peas, starter culture and a tiny bit of vinegar in a plastic bag and leave it in a warm spot until the fungus hyphae has coated everything in white fuzz and the peas are all stuck together. It looks like the worst ever science project from the back of the refrigerator. Then you take this cake of moldy stuff, slice it, brown it in a bit of oil or just eat it raw.

Since I had the starter culture thing I made a separate batch with garbonzo beans and served it to the family as a side dish. I even left the rest of the nasty uncooked cake out for everyone to look at before they tried it. Damn, I couldn't believe it. Everybody said it wasn't bad. Our son even said his vegan girlfriend had made him eat it before.

But, back to the poultry.... They don't like tempeh either, no matter how it is presented. I even threw it out for the yardbirds and it laid there on the ground for a day before the dog found and ate it.

 

[Maiahr]

@raingarden peas - I have never heard of this dish, but I am in Europe.. for the chicken - I boil water and simply soak the peas in boiling hot water for about 10min. I don't bother boiling, just soaking in boiling hot water. The chicken love it, especially if you serve it hot (we have snow here). I may be able to find soy beans, never bought before and I know nothing about them as chicken feed, so I will have to read. With the war in Ukraine wheat is now so expensive that it may be better for me to fully replace it with peas.

 

[LilRedmamma]

Yes... But nationwide and especially in my region it has been replaced by triticale and triticale is not good for the chicken (from personal experience).
So...the only thing that is better than wheat is oats.. and the next one on the list is corn..
I will have to read about oats. Nobody here gives it to chicken (only horses)

Interesting @ triticale, being new to feeds I looked it up @https://poultry.extension.org/articles/feeds-and-feed-ingredients. … A bit more complex than feeding your leftovers for sure!

 

[Butchers Wife]

OK, you might find this useful then
View attachment 2951433
And there's feedipedia https://www.feedipedia.org/content/feeds?category=13588

Wow! I will make good as of that! Thanks!

 

[Butchers Wife]

Good morning! Thank you all for a valuable discussions, so many insights! Yes, I did not mention anything about the flock size and type as I did not think it is important. I also did not mention the fact that all my chicken are "homemade" i.e. all are hatched by me so the layers are not the typical production layers (lived in cages, etc.).
Here is some info about the flock, though I would like to focus on some points about the grains.
The flock is a little over 100 birds, with 2-week old chicks to 5-year old hens + some turkeys. I am not counting the pheasants and peafowl as they are only 5. Free-range - they are absolutely free - no cage, no enclosure, no chicken coop; fenced with a 1.5meters fence which they regularly flyover and go in the woods (I live close to an oak tree forest in the mountains), they come back in the evening.

@Perris thank you for the table, I will print it and have it handy!

@U_Stormcrow Thank you for the explanation, except you have a statement in your post which surprised me: "Rice, of course, is even more deficient, and is still nutritionally superior to corn". According to the table above corn is better than rice? or I am missing something, I guess - rice or corn?
Triticale - it is not just my experience - all over my region where triticale is used instead of wheat, chicken are not well. Additionally, as per the little information available about it - it slows down the growth of chicken and is not good for chicks under 2 months of age. With layers - less eggs. It is gluten-free which I don't know if it is good or bad for the chicken.

@centrarchid - so you are not concerned about the oats negatives, such as: high beta-glucan levels (mentioned by @U_Stormcrow) or these levels are reduced when oats is soaked as you say - not less than 48 hours, etc. etc.?

@saysfaa thank you for the suggestion, but growing own grain for a large flock is not an option in my environment - too many obstacles, which I will not go into.

So from all comments, I may be wrong, but it sounds like wheat is the best GRAIN for chicken? Soybean - not produced and not imported in the country, (I have searched for that).
We have rice, oats, barley, corn - all at the same price.
Today I am buying Cockspur grass seeds (cheap and available) and I will be adding them to the diet.

Flaxseed is high in protein, maybe 25%, if I remember correctly. Not as high as soy.