best brand of chicken feed?

[LeslieDJoyce]

This is a fascinating thread. I love all the direct research you've done, Leslie. Would you mind sharing the nutshell version of your custom recipe? Thank you.

It's an all-purpose poultry pellet, 19% protein. The base is locally grown wheat, peas from the next state over, pumpkin seeds, with a bit of fish meal (local wholesale distributor) for animal protein, Diamond V organic yeast, and some other supplements like you generally find in poultry feed but with consideration for ducks, chicks, breeders & molting birds. It's a lower calcium feed, so we provide oyster shell on the side.

I think I can slightly taste the pumpkin seeds in the eggs, which is super yummy.

We ferment a portion of the feed with a bit of hay pellets. We also offer some dry. We mix the duck's dry feed with scratch to bring the protein down. We limit scratch for the chickens. I usually supplement the chick feed for a bit more protein.

The birds also have access to good pasture and bug forage areas. Providing diverse forage is a whole other thread.

 

[pdirt]

Quote:
Thank you...sounds like a great mix. The pumpkin seeds...are these the hull-less dark green variety or the hulled white kind?

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Thank you...sounds like a great mix. The pumpkin seeds...are these the hull-less dark green variety or the hulled white kind?

They don't have hulls. Less fiber so more concentrated nutrients.

Edited to add: here is a study of using pumpkin seed in broiler diets.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-635X2011000400001

 

[dee34491]

Gosh, Thanks for all the info I ' m just starting with my girls.! They r 9 wks.old now.

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[dee34491]

I m so glad I read this thread on feed.

 

[clarose]

What should be the first three ingredients in a good chicken feed?

 

[echale3]

What should be the first three ingredients in a good chicken feed?

It depends on how you are looking at it. Generally, the three main ingredients in a good layer feed are a protein source, a carbohydrate source, and a calcium source, followed by sources of other nutrients like salt, phosphorus, etc. In a good broiler feed, it'd be the same three main ingredients, but the ratios would be different--broilers require about 1/4 the amount of calcium that a laying hen or breeding stock does.

How you get to a nutritionally sufficient formula that matches feed intake rates is a matter of raw material selection and blending ratios.

Typical commercial feeds for layers would contain soybean meal, cracked corn, and limestone as the protein, carbohydrate, and calcium sources respectively. That said, there are all sorts of ways to formulate a nutritionally sufficient diet matched to age, rate of lay, feed intake rate, housing temperature, etc.

 

[clarose]

Thanks, I guess it depends on the stage the chicken is in at the time which will change the necessary ingredients in the food.

 

[echale3]

If you are formulating feed, you wouldn't necessarily go changing the actual ingredients (e.g., corn, soybean meal, oyster shell, dicalcium phosphate, iodized salt, etc.) to meet the nutritional needs of the bird, all you'd change was the relative ratios of them in the finished feed.

That said, in terms of changing ingredients, lets say you were cutting back on soybean meal as a crude protein source so as to not overfeed it. Based on your crude protein profile and the amount of soybean meal you were including in the formula, the diet was running close to the edge on the first few limiting amino acids (in descending order--lysine, methionine, threonine, tryptophan, and either valine or isoleucine depending on genetics). In that case, you'd change ingredients somewhat by adding in purified amino acid supplements to avoid nutritionally limiting bird performance. That'd be the sort of change in ingredients that would be a consideration.

 

[clarose]

Thank you for the info