Anybody Have a Good All-Flock Recipe for a Feed Mill?

[JKHerdItAll]

Hi all!

We've been getting feed at our local mill, but our birds aren't really thriving on it like they were on their fancy expensive stuff (Scratch & Peck).

The mill is willing to blend a custom feed for us - does anyone happen to have a full recipe with ingredient amounts/ratios? We have chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese. We're not opposed to multiple types of feed if we can't find a do-it-all All Flock.

We would definitely prefer soy-free and maybe also corn-free, but I know that may or may not be possible with the requirements we have.

Thanks!

 

[azygous]

May I ask a question? What is wrong with soy? What is the reason to avoid feeding it to chickens? Is it the natural estrogens found in soy that is a concern? If so, what do you believe is the harm and to whom?

It seems to be a stellar source of protein, economical, therefore affordable. Commercial feeds have a very careful balance of all the minerals and vitamins chickens require, and soy fills out the protein requirements very well.

This concern about soy has always puzzled me. Please enlighten me.

 

[JKHerdItAll]

May I ask a question? What is wrong with soy? What is the reason to avoid feeding it to chickens? Is it the natural estrogens found in soy that is a concern? If so, what do you believe is the harm and to whom?

It seems to be a stellar source of protein, economical, therefore affordable. Commercial feeds have a very careful balance of all the minerals and vitamins chickens require, and soy fills out the protein requirements very well.

This concern about soy has always puzzled me. Please enlighten me.

Our largest client has MS, and has noticed that eating eggs from chickens that have eaten soy causes her symptoms to flare up. It may be psychological, it may not - but we don’t want to lose her business.

 

[azygous]

Thanks. That's a good reason to avoid soy. Here's a whole grain recipe that avoids both soy and corn. https://www.gardenbetty.com/homemade-whole-grain-chicken-feed-updated-and-now-corn-free/

 

[JKHerdItAll]

@U_Stormcrow I've seen you helping a lot of people - is there any chance you might be able to share your feed mill's recipe? We might need to tweak it a bit to support all our species, but it might be a better starting point than what our mill makes now. Something they have in there as-is is not agreeing with our birds. I can try to post the label later today!

Again, we're not 100% opposed to soy or corn. For the past couple months, we've been using our feed mill's generic blend for the majority of our birds and have kept one coop soy-free (via NCO/S&P/whatever's in stock) for our big client. We're getting by that way, especially now that we're not paying $1000+ per month for NCO or Scratch & Peck for all our birds

 

[U_Stormcrow]

@U_Stormcrow I've seen you helping a lot of people - is there any chance you might be able to share your feed mill's recipe? We might need to tweak it a bit to support all our species, but it might be a better starting point than what our mill makes now. Something they have in there as-is is not agreeing with our birds. I can try to post the label later today!

Again, we're not 100% opposed to soy or corn. For the past couple months, we've been using our feed mill's generic blend for the majority of our birds and have kept one coop soy-free (via NCO/S&P/whatever's in stock) for our big client. We're getting by that way, especially now that we're not paying $1000+ per month for NCO or Scratch & Peck for all our birds

I don't feed nearly enough to have a custom blend, I'm just lucky enough to have a local mill with good nutritional formulations (as long as you don't look too closely at the byproducts on the ingredients list used to achieve those numbers), sorry.

I trust them to assay their invidual ingredient batches and adjust as needed.

and I'll never recommend Garden Betty, contra @azygous above - her numbers don't add up w/ her own calculator, and its "generous" compared to other sources, like Feedipedia and USDA for average nutritional values of various ingredients.

 

[SunnyFeathers]

May I ask a question? What is wrong with soy? What is the reason to avoid feeding it to chickens? Is it the natural estrogens found in soy that is a concern? If so, what do you believe is the harm and to whom?

It seems to be a stellar source of protein, economical, therefore affordable. Commercial feeds have a very careful balance of all the minerals and vitamins chickens require, and soy fills out the protein requirements very well.

This concern about soy has always puzzled me. Please enlighten me.

I cannot speak for everybody, but I am a cancer survivor. My cancer was a pretty advanced case of endometrial cancer.

Most people who,have endometrial cancer - along with about 70% of those who have female breast cancer and about 65% of those who have ovarian cancer - have tumors that are made up of estrogen sensitive cancer cells. That is, their tumors tend to grow in the presence of estrogen.

Nobody who has a history of estrogen sensitive tumors should voluntarily eat anything with soy in it. Soy is a pseudo-estrogen.

It is bad enough that there is so much soy and soy byproducts hidden in our foods. We don’t have to make it worse by feeding soy to the chickens who will provide us with breakfast.

Just my opinion, of course.