Soooo your saying that there is animal by products in bread, crackers, and ice cream cones and its a against federal law to give them to the goats but ok for people to eat them?
Absolutely. Commonly referred to as the "feed-ban," it's against USDA regulation to feed most any protein derived from a mammal back to ruminant animals.
In chicken feed is dry cows blood too and they sell it....thats where the protein comes from I was told this by a guy at the feed store that use to work for swanson. If these things were against the law they would not be on the market for sell would they?
Chickens aren't ruminants. Hell, they're not even mammals. They're not herbivores like ruminants, either -- they're omnivores. They normally eat things like bugs and grass and perhaps even the occasional mouse, snake, etc.. They even eat
each other sometimes.. Goats? Not so much...doubt you'll ever catch a goat snacking on another dead goat.
In other words, feeding chickens is a completely different endeavor that really doesn't apply here..
However.....you do bring up a good point! Lots of times you see people on here go "Oh darn, my goats goat into my chicken feed. Is it OK for them to do that?"
The answer should be NO, and that you should make every effort to prevent it from happening. The reason is just as you've stated above -- chicken feed may legally contain ruminant parts. I wouldn't even necessarily trust that it's strictly cow's blood, but could also contain pig blood, goat blood, sheep blood, etc.. Feeding goat's blood to a goat........generally not recommended.
YET...time and time again, most folks here are like "a little bit is OK."
Again...to reiterate...feeding ground-up cows back to cows is why the US, Canada, Britain, etc ended up with a mad cow outbreak. That's been proven. It's a fact, founded in solid scientific evidence. And since the ruminant-parts ban has been enacted, the number of mad-cow cases has plummeted to near zero.
Look it up if you don't believe me.
Check the tag; if it doens't contain copper, it's not for goats. Period......the tag says copper in it so what are you squawking for are chickens rubbing off on you?
If it contains copper, then it's not suitable for sheep, which is another species you mentioned that particular feed was suitable for. Copper is toxic to sheep. If it's ALL STOCK like you say, and it says it's OK for sheep despite the fact that it contains copper....well, that's even more suspect to me than saying a copper-free feed is suitable for goats.
As bad as copper deficiency is, it's generally accepted as being much easier to deal with than a hemolytic crisis resulting from acute copper toxicity.. Pretty much 100% mortality there..
That said, I've never, ever seen a guaranteed analysis tag on ANY feed containing copper (be it for goats, cattle, rabbits, horses, you name it) that didn't also include a statement which reads something like "CONTAINS COPPER: DO NOT FEED TO SHEEP". If the bag of whatever you have contains copper and doesn't have that statement on it, I'd be very surprised. Likewise, if it says "ALL STOCK" on the front and "DO NOT FEED TO SHEEP" on the tag, well...again, extremely surprised.
Somehow, though...I sorta doubt either of those scenarios apply here. I frankly think you're confused about something...I'm just not sure what, exactly.
