BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[Beekissed]

Just slathered Monkey's comb - tips and blade were turning bluish again today. The others' big combs are fine, I'm thinking Monkey has circulation issues. But I slathered all of the boys in that coop (all big combs).

@Beekissed , would you mind describing/explaining the one-time seasonal castor oil treatment you described doing for your birds?

- Ant Farm

It's not much of a description, I'm afraid...I just apply castor oil to their combs, wattles and legs/feet each winter. It acts as a moisture barrier and also stimulates blood towards the skin's surface. You can actually see the increased redness of the comb and wattles after an application of CO...good thing to know if wanting to take a bird to a show. Some people use Vick's for that purpose, but it has a distinct smell....CO has no smell. It's very viscous, so tends to stick around a long time...harder to wash off one's hands than is Vaseline, so I'm thinking it doesn't dissipate as quickly as Vaseline either.

Great for scale mite treatment as well...CO is very well known for helping to regrow hair, scale, skin, etc. It's a natural insecticide, so it's great for mites but it also soothes the angry tissue of the affected areas while helping to generate new scale growth. Had an old rooster with a gimpy leg once and after I treated him for mild scale mite, his limp disappeared. After noting that, I did a little research on it and found it's a natural anti-inflammatory as well...use it on my own achy joints now to great effect.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:
That's very informative! Where do you get your castor oil? I can't recall ever buying it before...

- Ant Farm

 

[Beekissed]

That's very informative! Where do you get your castor oil? I can't recall ever buying it before...

- Ant Farm

Best place I've found is Walmart pharmacy, in the laxative section. It has a 6 oz bottle for a good price.

 

[NanaKat]

Lots of great discussion the past few days.
Always give meat to my birds, be it leftovers, raw trimmings, even cans of bargain tuna with oil. Birds raid the cat's food bowl on the back porch frequently.

Feral hogs here in all 77 counties and are legal to shoot year round because of the damage to land, crops and livestock. They make great barbecue according to our friends and family that are over run with them...butcher, hang in freezer then thaw and barbecue whole in smoker...or butcher and immediately fire pit roast.

Feed costs here are moderate compared to prices mentioned. The past few months the rats, starlings and sparrows are blowing out my feed cost data....working on irradicating those with rat shot...making progress.

 

[Molpet]

looks like castor oil is good for lots of things http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/10/01/castor-oil-uses.aspx

 

[Beekissed]

looks like castor oil is good for lots of things http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/10/01/castor-oil-uses.aspx

Yep...we are never without a bottle of it in the house or coop now. Any new birds that arrive here get their castor oil on the legs and feet before being turned loose, just in case they have scale mites. Sometimes they also get an oral dose of CO, just for good measure. Not sure if that does anything significant but it sure can't hurt.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

My DH works at a not-so-fast restaurant chain, Baja Fresh, and they trim the meat before cooking. He is able to bring home the trim and cook it up for the chooks, and dogs...cats too! I am wondering if we should just give it raw, is raw better for them?

Maybe you could go to your local restaurants and ask if they would be willing to give you the trim, as they would just toss it anyway~!

Quote:

How awesome! Not sure if I can swing that, worth a look...

I DID have the same question, anyone - raw or cooked?

- Ant Farm

To be on the safe side, I always cook if for no other reason than to remove bacteria from handling. Where the food is cut up from the tables, to the knives, to everyone that touches it can transfer bacteria.

My old reproduction book on keeping poultry on scraps (war time Britain) suggests fish and fish meal, including detailed instructions for cooking up heads and bones (they were rationing so it was illegal to give "human edible" food to them). But I'm worried about a fishy taste to the eggs.

I got a pretty good kitten food, but it was quite pricey. I need to look at the cheaper ones. I get sort of paralyzed in the store, there are SOOOOOO many options... I really just need to get some meat.

- Ant Farm

I can get fish heads very cheap at the Asian market so I'd like the instructions because the chickens don't do much with the big heads.

Roaches would be a good insect source....can't kill 'em and they thrive anywhere. I doubt if folks would want to buy feed with ground roaches in it, though, just because of the negative PR roaches get.

He said using them for human food hasn't really caught on yet.
Ya think?

Although, there is a tree caterpillar in somewhere in Africa that is harvested, deep fried and sold packaged just like potato chips.

I'm not sure how often wild turkeys ingest earth worms.. do they dig a lot like chickens do> Seems they more walk along picking things off plants, surfaces...

if they get black head, they die and disappear from view via predators and scavengers, once the symptoms start they go down hill extremely fast.

That is also true of Marek's and fowl pox. It is common not every where yet a lot want vaccinated chicks. It also takes just one infected bird to enter the premises........ not necessarily an management issue.

They will dig. In winter they'll dig up tubers to eat. I doubt chickens would dig up turnips in frozen ground.

I was very proud of myself to have 300 lbs of feed left from my last shipment of feed when I picked up this delivery. Usually I wind up having to visit the local feed store for an extra bag or two before the next delivery is available. I once tried tracking feed consumption per bird using a spreadsheet I'd been supplied, but it was hopeless. I've got so many birds of different ages on different types of feed that it became too much work to track....says the woman who tracks eggs laid by each bird plus the egg weight, plus bird weights, plus regular photos.....

You probably have some pretty good forage this time of year.
My food bill goes up significantly once bugs die, vegetation stops growing, ground freezes and sometimes covered with snow.

If the hens consume a "fishy" tasting fish you will DEFINITELY taste it in the eggs, and it's not even remotely pleasant. When we started up our aquaponics we added feeder goldfish to help establish the habitat along with the fingerling Tilapia. The Tilapia would eat half a goldfish, leaving the head. We mad the mistake of feeding these heads to the chickens. YUCK! Never again!. As a rule, if the fish odor is strong then only the roosters or the chicks are allowed to have it. I don't know about changes to the meat flavor though. None of my butchered birds ever tasted like fish.

A poultry nutritionist told us you could go up to about 4 or 5% of the diet with fish and not impart it to the eggs.
High flax content will also give eggs a fishy taste.
Like you, usually only breeders or chicks get much fish. I start with a 16% organic grower and mix in fishmeal for chicks at a ratio of 10:1 to raise the protein to 20%.
The fishmeal is 60%.

Lots of great discussion the past few days.
Always give meat to my birds, be it leftovers, raw trimmings, even cans of bargain tuna with oil. Birds raid the cat's food bowl on the back porch frequently.

Feral hogs here in all 77 counties and are legal to shoot year round because of the damage to land, crops and livestock. They make great barbecue according to our friends and family that are over run with them...butcher, hang in freezer then thaw and barbecue whole in smoker...or butcher and immediately fire pit roast.

Feed costs here are moderate compared to prices mentioned. The past few months the rats, starlings and sparrows are blowing out my feed cost data....working on irradicating those with rat shot...making progress.

I always feed all the meat and fish scraps to the chickens but with so many chickens, they each don't get much.

I wanted to add something to the cat food discussion.

I was just at the grocery store and checked prices. Your numbers may vary. Most canned cat food started around 20 cents per ounce. Some were as low as 11% protein.
Dry cat food varied between 12 and 28 cents per ounce. The protein varied between 11 and 33% protein.
So if you just go buy cat food based on someone's suggestion, if you don't read the label for ingredients and protein %, you're just winging it.
If you buy without reading the label, you could be lowering amino acids rather than increasing them.
Mackerel, on the other hand, is 10 cents per ounce and you're getting plain fish with no additives which are added to supplement the meat or fish in cat food making the food specific to the needs of feline carnivores.
So, in my mind, why pay more to enhance the amino acid balance of chicken feed buy buying cat food when you can get mackerel that is about 23% protein and high in omega-3.
The whole idea of upping protein during molt or for breeding is to improve the amino acid balance for omnivores from what is in plant based diets. Crude protein is misleading in many ways. Some grains may be as high as 14% protein (though most are much lower) but they have huge deficiencies in certain amino acids. More of the amino acids are essential to chickens than humans.

 

[Molpet]

any body use kelp instead of fish meal?
I bought some feed from a farmer, who bought it from a mill.. she said she added fish meal to up the protein for turkeys.. she gave me some, but when I got home , it was kelp.. 4% protein .. she said to add 1lb per 50lb bag of grower
I had read too much kelp was a issue and the feed already has kelp in it, so I need to do some research ....

 

[Beer can]

Check out the health benefits of Purslane, stuff grows like weeds in my garden. Highest levels of omega fatty acids than any other plant and higher than fish oils.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

any body use kelp instead of fish meal?
I bought some feed from a farmer, who bought it from a mill.. she said she added fish meal to up the protein for turkeys.. she gave me some, but when I got home , it was kelp.. 4% protein .. she said to add 1lb per 50lb bag of grower
I had read too much kelp was a issue and the feed already has kelp in it, so I need to do some research ....

I use both. Fishmeal for the birds that need more protein, kelp for the trace minerals and vitamins. Kelp especially starting a couple weeks before collecting for incubation.