- Oct 13, 2008
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Quote:
Because most homemade diets are imbalanced, and tend to be too high in salt. The calcium from greens is not particularly well absorbed by poultry or people. You are puzzled because you haven't had access to a good book on livestock nutrition; once you have it all becomes clear, Grasshopper.
We raise our chickens because we know what feed we are giving them, the conditions they live under, and the condition of their health.
See, the main part (among other things) of what puzzles me (a chicken keeper of twenty-plus years who has fed his chickens all sorts of things) about all this the fact that these fancy "complete rations" are only a few decades old. And chickens have been kept by people around the world, with great success, for MILLENIA. How then did these supposedly malnourished chickens survive and thrive for so long? (clearly they did or we would not have chickens today.) Where I live and throughout parts of SE Asia and Oceania there are wild red jungle fowl (the ancestors of all domestic chickens). They thrive and reproduce like rodents, and no one is feeding them a "balanced ration." Of course, these aren't "production chickens" that lay a lot of eggs and so forth--I understand that--BUT... they are chickens, and I assure you they are quite healthy. So it suggests to me that there is definitely a middle ground between the "let the chickens forage for whatever they need" and the "feed only pre-formulated rations" schools of thought. ESPECIALLY amongst the HERITAGE breeds, which are the very breeds that EXCELL at doing just that! These are the breeds that have been kept for generations, and THAT is why! Because they are that middle ground, and that is their value. They may not lay 300 eggs a year, but they don't require a veterinary nutitrion degree and a chemistry lab to feed them or controlled conditions to breed and survive.
Also, while the poultry industry might appear to be experts on nutrition, modern nutritional science is uncovering many new partially known or as yet un-known factors (the role of pro-biotic elements, the differences in efficacy between naturally available vitamins and minerals versus the synthetic ones found in many feed mixes, the differences between animal protein from insects and larvae compared to the soy in many feeds, the weird and only partly understood anti-nutritional properties of soy, etc. etc. etc.). So as far as I'm concerned, the jury's not out on any of this stuff. And nature consistently seems to turn out to be a heck of a lot more complex than whatever science the poultry industry uses to synthesize a "balanced ration." I'm not gonna bad-mouth feed mixes, I think they are a great boon for most of us, actually--but I just have no faith in their manufacturers' or anyone else's claims of omniscience and absolute superiority to any and all home-made supplementary feeds or substitutions.
It just doesn't add up, or jibe with my own experience--or thousands of years of chicken-keeping history. A little common sense goes a long way...
Because most homemade diets are imbalanced, and tend to be too high in salt. The calcium from greens is not particularly well absorbed by poultry or people. You are puzzled because you haven't had access to a good book on livestock nutrition; once you have it all becomes clear, Grasshopper.
We raise our chickens because we know what feed we are giving them, the conditions they live under, and the condition of their health.
See, the main part (among other things) of what puzzles me (a chicken keeper of twenty-plus years who has fed his chickens all sorts of things) about all this the fact that these fancy "complete rations" are only a few decades old. And chickens have been kept by people around the world, with great success, for MILLENIA. How then did these supposedly malnourished chickens survive and thrive for so long? (clearly they did or we would not have chickens today.) Where I live and throughout parts of SE Asia and Oceania there are wild red jungle fowl (the ancestors of all domestic chickens). They thrive and reproduce like rodents, and no one is feeding them a "balanced ration." Of course, these aren't "production chickens" that lay a lot of eggs and so forth--I understand that--BUT... they are chickens, and I assure you they are quite healthy. So it suggests to me that there is definitely a middle ground between the "let the chickens forage for whatever they need" and the "feed only pre-formulated rations" schools of thought. ESPECIALLY amongst the HERITAGE breeds, which are the very breeds that EXCELL at doing just that! These are the breeds that have been kept for generations, and THAT is why! Because they are that middle ground, and that is their value. They may not lay 300 eggs a year, but they don't require a veterinary nutitrion degree and a chemistry lab to feed them or controlled conditions to breed and survive.
Also, while the poultry industry might appear to be experts on nutrition, modern nutritional science is uncovering many new partially known or as yet un-known factors (the role of pro-biotic elements, the differences in efficacy between naturally available vitamins and minerals versus the synthetic ones found in many feed mixes, the differences between animal protein from insects and larvae compared to the soy in many feeds, the weird and only partly understood anti-nutritional properties of soy, etc. etc. etc.). So as far as I'm concerned, the jury's not out on any of this stuff. And nature consistently seems to turn out to be a heck of a lot more complex than whatever science the poultry industry uses to synthesize a "balanced ration." I'm not gonna bad-mouth feed mixes, I think they are a great boon for most of us, actually--but I just have no faith in their manufacturers' or anyone else's claims of omniscience and absolute superiority to any and all home-made supplementary feeds or substitutions.
It just doesn't add up, or jibe with my own experience--or thousands of years of chicken-keeping history. A little common sense goes a long way...
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