bad or half-baked chicken advice you've received?

[tls_ranch]

Just heard another bit of advice from a grandfather while picking up my kid from school. He told me that....

Brown eggs have a stronger or more richer flavor than white eggs

edited to add... although it could be partly true as some brown egg layers carry a gene that can "taint" the flavor of their eggs when fed certain ingredients. BUT, overall there really is no difference in flavor between white, brown or blue/green eggs

 

[OC closet chicken fan]

i was at my local feed store today and asked if they had 50lbs bags of starter mash and he said "oh no you don't need that... a 50 lbs bag of LAYER mash is all you need... complete nutrition for chickens of any age..."

.....

 

[pidgey]

I wanted to make a note on two things brought up way earlier in the thread. Someone said something about feeding chickens moldy food and them being fine. Mold in general isn't necessarily poisonous, but some common molds can make toxins that cause liver damage. Large amounts can kill a bird (or a person) relatively quickly, small amounts over a long period of time can cause a slow build up of liver damage. The main mold of concern is Aspergillus, which makes aflatoxin. The mold doesn't always make the toxin, but it is a risk you run if you feed (or eat) moldy stuff.

Another thing stated was that natural vitamins are equivalent to synthetic vitamins and that a vitamin is a vitamin is a vitamin. Some vitamins come in a lot of different forms (do you want your calcium as carbonate, citrate, malate, or microcrystalline hydroxyapatite?), which have different bioavailability. Vitamin fortified feed will probably only have one version, and probably the form cheapest to manufacture rather than the best absorbed form. There are a lot of other compounds in food that have health effects we haven't even quantified yet, and I'd argue that saying that any artificial diet is complete shows an arrogant belief that we understand every single chemical our bodies (or our chicken's bodies) need for optimal health. Yes, we do know how to prevent obvious deficiency, but I'm not convinced mainstream nutritional science has moved much beyond that.

 

[deerman]

A.T. Hagan :

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This is a very good point. Using the examples that Beekissed cites (not picking on you Bee as they are common examples that appear here often).

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Except for the upside down chicken line every one of those others can be both a NO and a YES at the same time. You have to have the whole story to know whether it's true or false.

I agree some are true facts , other are depending on a few thing.

Like flat roost in area of sub 0 temp, will keep toes from getting frostbit.....toes tuck into the feathers ,on very cold nights.​

 

[The Yakima Kid]

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Yes, different forms of vitamins have different bioavailability - but for a given form it doesn't matter if it was synthesized or extracted. The problem with your logic is that manufactured complete feeds must meet a standard - and the standard includes measures of activity, not simply weights of a given nutrient! Don't make the assumption that less active forms are always cheaper to manufacture because that is not the case. Chemical stability is also important; so more of a less available form may be more desirable if the more available form is prone to oxidation or other degradation. Calcium is a mineral, not a vitamin. Remember, extracting "natural" vitamins from their sources requires the use of some very nasty solvents.

Mainstream nutritional science are the folks who discovered those vitamins and other factors that are essential and continue to do major research.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

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Uhyup. The modern hen needs additional feedstuffs at least some of the time because the stresses put on her in laying are greater than those encountered by her wild ancestors.

Poor laying seems to have factors beyond the number of oocytes. Professor Dryden bred Lady MacDuff, who laid 679 eggs in 36 months; 303 of those were laid in her first laying year, 1912-1913. Oregona, whom he also bred, laid 987 eggs in five years, and early in her sixth year she laid her 1,000th egg. Oocyte counts of hen ovaries done in the early 20th C. found a range of from 914 to more than 13,000! He had a number of hens who laid 600 or more eggs in three years.

These records were mainly the result of genetic improvements to the stock, which consisted of Barred Rocks, Leghorns, and hybrids of these. He later went on to develop the California Gray, a breed selected for laying longevity; this breed was developed from Barred Rocks and Leghorns and maybe other stock. Many of the buildings built at Oregon State University in the early 20th Century were funded by the sale of poultry breeding stock developed by Professor Dryden.

He also did research into housing and nutrition because the strains of prolonged production require excellent physical and psychological support; like a draft horse or a race horse or a dairy cow, a hen is an athlete, albeit a very specialized one. Given reasonable genetics, a contented, healthy hen is a productive hen.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

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I agree with this, but I thought it would be worth adding to the discussion by also pointing out that "productivity" in real life means different things in different circumstances and to different people. For me commercial feed is very expensive. So any by-products of my farm, community, or household that I can give the birds, or anything I can culture for them for free (bugs or waterweeds) with a minimum of fuss, or better yet free range in a wooded area (I wish!), is a huge boon and means cheaper production. I'm sure many others find this to be true as well, including farmers throughout history and many modern small farmers in the developing world to whom any costly inputs are a big burden to be avoided (read about the development of the Giriraja chicken in India, for example). There's also the issue of quality over quantity--I personally would choose the firm, bright yellow yolks and great taste of a pastured/free range type egg over the dull, generic stuff from a diet of commercial feed any day. So I would even take 150 of the former a year over 200+ a year of the latter--to me (and most of my customers) that would be a GAIN, not a loss, in "production."

Many of the people on this forum are raising chickens not for maximum production profit per se, but because eggs from beloved, healthy home-flocks on a varied or free-range diet TASTE better. They don't want to produce something that is identical in mediocrity to what they could buy more cheaply at Costco. We would do well to encourage this trend, I think, because it means better food for people and better and more humane living conditions for livestock.

I agree with everything you say; but my point is that the average person raising chickens in a backyard should provide a balanced ration and supplemental calcium and limit the treats. I see way too many chickens free ranging on manicured lawns and barren lots and being tossed nothing but scratch because someone saw too many episodes of Lassie. It's a downer. October has been "my chicken was eaten by a hawk" month on several local forums, which is even sadder. Sometimes my cynical mind leads me to the notion that there are probably people who went out and bought an apron for the sole purpose of carrying scratch to the chickens because they saw it done that way on TV or in a movie.

We owe our chickens the best life we can give them; and this means we are responsible for their well being. Treating them kindly does not mean expecting them to live out our fantasy of what is natural because the modern chicken is not a natural animal; she is the result of thousands of years of domestication and is expected to perform feats beyond her wild ancestors. She deserves feed, shelter, compassion, and as much attention as we can give her, even if it is just coming down and watching her a bit every day to see how she is doing. Your method of raising chickens fits right into those values of mine; and I have no disagreement with you.

 

[deerman]

This one is even a sticky.......you can tell a egg will hatch by the float test...funny thing that test is to see how old a egg is.

the level the egg float at ,doesn't tell you the chick is alive only if the chicks moves you can see the egg move in the water.

really surprise that made a sticky in the quail section.........things that make you say hummmm


it tells a egg age ,because the air cell get larger the older the egg.

 

[Pony Trotsky]

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That's quite funny - but entirely possible, really.

I once had to argue long and hard with a transplanted New Yorker who thought that live Perherons would make ideally "authentic" lawn decorations for her weekender farm house.

Good grief.

 

[Chinchilla2]

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OH NO!!!! I gotta wear an apron to tote scratch out there? My babies are gonna starve before that happens. I always thought that's what Folger's cans were for.