Alternative feeds

[OzarkEgghead]

I recently met an old-timer who was expounding on his perceived evils of commercially prepared feeds. In his estimation they were of high cost & of low quality. More or less, he said people were wasting money. He could have come off as nasty or a know-it-all but he really was a sweet, engaging guy & his stories of "old-time living" were so fun & interesting that you couldn't help but love the guy. He claims that the ONLY thing he's ever fed his chickens was beans & pasta or beans & rice & they ate less, thrived on it, laid strong, healthy eggs & he spent less on those ingredients than he ever would on a commercial feed.

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? Could such a combo REALLY provide full-grown hens with all the nutrition they need to be healthy AND lay eggs?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

No. Maybe the chickens of decades ago, but not the chickens of today.

 

[Geena]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/beans-and-pasta-oh-my.1567022/

 

[SandyRiverChick]

No. There are actually many threads if you do a forum search, on "making your own feed," or commercial feed alternatives. I've done the "experiment," very well intended to actually improve quality and the end result was decline in health. My advice is don't even consider it. Just ADD healthy treats but don't replace it as main diet.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I recently met an old-timer who was expounding on his perceived evils of commercially prepared feeds. In his estimation they were of high cost & of low quality. More or less, he said people were wasting money. He could have come off as nasty or a know-it-all but he really was a sweet, engaging guy & his stories of "old-time living" were so fun & interesting that you couldn't help but love the guy. He claims that the ONLY thing he's ever fed his chickens was beans & pasta or beans & rice & they ate less, thrived on it, laid strong, healthy eggs & he spent less on those ingredients than he ever would on a commercial feed.

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? Could such a combo REALLY provide full-grown hens with all the nutrition they need to be healthy AND lay eggs?

He has proverbial "rose colored glasses" on, his memory is influenced by nostalgia, or he had much lower definitions of "healthy and productive" than is expected of a modern bird.

Poultry nutritional needs are better understood than any other creature on the planet - even humans. Anything less than optimal nutrition is associated with declines in egg size, quantity, nutritonal content, etc. Similarly, reduced rates of growth, final mass, feed efficiency, resistance to disease and parasite challenge.

Some of those differences are very small, and you might reasonably decide that "less than optimum" is still perfectly acceptable. But to try and meet a chickens minimal amino acid targets (even the old ones) using simply black beans and whole (soft) wheat pasta, you would need to use about 2 parts beans to 1 part pasta. Beans have a large number of anti-nutritive factors, such that inclusion rates greater than around 15% are associated with negative outcomes - yet the recipe is amlost 67% beans to reach a target Met level of a mere 0.3%. That's not cost effective either.

Add more pasta and your Met levels come down significantly, meany greater consumption to meeet targets, meaning excess carbs, fatty deposits leading to FLH and similar maladies. Don't use whole wheat? New calculations. Nor have we begun to address a host of vitamins and minerals needed, from non-phytate sources of Phosphorus (which that recipe doesn't have) to trace amounts of selenium (which it probably does) and everything in between.

Making high quality, balanced chicken feed is HARD. In answer to your question, no a two ingredient feed doesn't work. Because Math, ands because Nature doesn't provide any two ingredients which, in combination, provide a balanced diet meeting all of a chicken's needs, anymore than it provides two ingredients meeting all of a human's needs. Look about the world, there are very few creatures adapted to live on just one or two feed sources - and most of them are threatened, endangered, or extinct.

None are omnivores domesticated for most of human existence.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Sorry about all the spelling errors, I was late getting back to work as it was.

 

[OzarkEgghead]

No. There are actually many threads if you do a forum search, on "making your own feed," or commercial feed alternatives. I've done the "experiment," very well intended to actually improve quality and the end result was decline in health. My advice is don't even consider it. Just ADD healthy treats but don't replace it as main diet.

Frankly, I don't really care to make my own feed. I'm happy with the results the layer mash my local grain mill makes. My girls are happy, healthy & lay nearly every day. I was simply curious if what he was suggesting would really work or if it was the Depression-era memories of an old man being remembered as better than what they truly were. It's human nature to look back over "the good old days" & remember them to be a lot less difficult than what they really were.

 

[OzarkEgghead]

In the depression era, I doubt that a chicken could expect a long and happy life. Priorities were different. The old guy's approach was probably appropriate for the time and situation.

Probably not one that wasn't actively laying but I would think it would have been kinda dumb to dispatch a hen that was giving you a meal each day.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Probably not one that wasn't actively laying but I would think it would have been kinda dumb to dispatch a hen that was giving you a meal each day.

The error is that hens in that period - even good ones - averaged just one egg every three days or so. and of course most of that laying was concentrated in months with more daylight hours, while the winter months when food was scarce are associated with greatly reduced rates of lay, long molts, and of course little feed to spare (or crops in the fields).
Which is why until very recently in human history, animals like chickens were heavily culled going into the winter months to reduce unproductive mouths to feed, and then the flock refreshed as "spring chickens" - so common in fact that the phrase has entered our lexicon (and with the advent of widespread refrigeration and commercial chicken production, is now falling out of use)

 

[Geena]

Which is why until very recently in human history, animals like chickens were heavily culled going into the winter months to reduce unproductive mouths to feed, and then the flock refreshed as "spring chickens"

I still adhere to this practice today. If they are not being kept for breeding, they go into the freezer. I do still keep some old gals and pets because I'm too much of a softy at times, but everyone else needs to go before winter hits.