Chick Challenges DIY Feed

[ChickyCh00k]

Troll for the feed industry emphasis added

Stormcrow is extremely knowledgeable about chicken feed and you'd do well to heed some of his advice.

. I welcome any feedback that is encouraging in this endeavor

Everyone here is concerned about animal welfare which is why you'll not find much encouragement for your less than knowledgeable feed plans.

Your first post mentioned you want to make a premium from selling the eggs of the hens fed your proposed diet. Unfortunately, many, many of your chicks will not make it to laying age, let alone be well enough to lay healthy, edible eggs.

I will continue with my endeavor in the belief there is a better way than what is being offered by commercial feed.

Chicks and laying hens require a very specific balance of nutrients for optimal health - that's why, as Stormcrow mentioned, poultry feed has been so thoroughly studied. Optimal health produces optimal eggs/meat. You're not providing that balance with your experiment and 100 birds are going to suffer because of it. Commercial chicken feed producers employ poultry nutrition experts to ensure their feeds are properly balanced for the health and wellbeing of the birds.

People are also willing to pay a premium for organically fed, free range chicken eggs. That is a much more ethical and safe way to get a premium for eggs and you can find commercial, organic (soy-free), nutritionally balanced chicken feed for way cheaper than the cost of *correctly* making your own.

 

[Thatscluckinggreat]

Troll for the feed industry emphasis added

476,550 members on this site and Stormcrow is among the top few in knowledge of poultry nutrition. You just called him a troll because you're killing chicks with malnutrition, and he told you what you needed to hear but refuse to believe. I'm sorry if it seems we all ganged up on you but there is a reason. While your intentions may be noble...they are misguided, and this is not the community that will support ignorance leading to chickens suffering. Please cease in your hands on experiment and take some time to learn what is possible to accomplish first.

 

[sjango]

I am not incredibly knowledgeable on this subject but have been raising chickens for a decade now. I buy organic non-corn non-soy feed that has a lot of whole ingredients alongside some pellets. The feed contains sunflower seeds, millet, quinoa, wheatberries, and some legumes that have likely been previously cooked then dried to remove toxins. I know nothing of any processing for the other ingredients.

If you are set on doing this I would say this: study publications on the subject and existing feed labels very carefully and find all vitamins and minerals required and the range of recommended ratios. Then find a group of raw ingredients that can meet those requirements and offer them at appropriate quantities. For chicks you might want to crush them to provide easier access. This will necessarily be expensive, time consuming, and include a wide host of inputs.

In the wild chicks get by. They forage and eat with their mother and hatch mates all day. Because of the diversity of food sources and quantity needed it is very costly and inefficient to feed this way compared to commercial feed. I would say a diet based on insects and seeds may give you a good start but you still will run into a challenges and those alone will not likely be comprehensive enough. Many of the deficits in nutrition won't be clear until later on too. It's also hard to identify what your feed is lacking.

In conclusion I think this is a very hard thing to do but I do not think it is impossible. You are going to need a complex diversity of ingredients undoubtedly. To do it right you would need to study poultry nutrition at different stages of life and follow recommended ratios in the form of raw ingredients. Perhaps consider what wild forage diets would include. Unfortunately, this project does not guarantee success even under ideal and informed situations.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

No need for people to jump to my defense. I've made clear what I think of OP's opinion on feeding chickens, I place no greater weight on OP's opinion of me (less, actually).

However, in a final effort to be of some benefit to the suffering birds...

Meet @Shadrach . Shadrach and I disagree about some things. Shadrach has, at one point (and perhaps still) muted me. Shadrach posted before I did, with concern about the health of your flock as result of your feed experiment. Shadrach is from another country, which approaches feed formulations differently than we do here in the US, though with similar end goals. Shadrach rescues battery hens from the evils of factory "battery" conditions and minimally nutritional feeds. Shadrach relies on free range feeding considerably more than I do in keeping my flock. (I believe that was the subject of disagreement, how confident we could be that our respective pastures were meeting our chicken's nutritional needs. I have younger birds, raised on superior feed than what's used in factory farms, and prefer greater certainty than the birds in Shadrach's situation, so we have different circumstances, conditions, and goals with our flocks.)

We are, on a host of issues, quite far apart. Listen to Shadrach. Don't make your birds suffer more, give a care to your birds.

and, as an aside, at the bottom of my signature, you will find a link to my "Meet the Member" page. I've done a lot of things in my life, working for a feed manufacturer is not among them. and if you'd use the search engine, you would find that I have helped fellow posters in Africa and Japan formulate feeds when local options don't suffice. I've even shown people how to build a feed calculator, should they be interested in learning the topic for themselves, and shared my core sources. This paragraph offered solely for the benefit of those who may run across this later, and have interest in doing the hard work.

 

[Shadrach]

Troll for the feed industry emphasis added

 

[3KillerBs]

How many chicks have died from this experiment so far?
It would be better to have aquired the knowledge of what chicks need in their diet before getting them.
My suggestion is you forget about the nice premium a few people may pay and concentrate on the welfare and health of the chicks.

This.

Absolutely.

You are killing and crippling the helpless baby chicks whose welfare is YOUR responsibility. Stop. The commercial farmers you denigrate would not do this but, rather, give young chicks careful care to meet their needs at this most critical time in their lives.

Give these chicks proper nutrition NOW and some may recover to live modestly productive lives. For others it will already be too late.

 

[NatJ]

I have a niche market of potential customers that would value the eggs being produced this way and pay a nice premium.

There is a chance the premium is high enough to pay for the more expensive feeds you need to use, but I do hope you did the math to check that. It doesn't make sense to spend more time, more effort, and more money to do this if you aren't getting paid enough more money to cover that. And if you end up with very many chicks that die or fail to thrive, that is another cost you should include in your calculations.

They did well for a while (they're 3 weeks old) but now about half of them are having serious walking issues. It certainly looks like some kind of failure to thrive issue.

Probably a deficiency of some sort.

There are web pages with lists of various deficiencies, that might help you track down which one.

A google search found these for me:
https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poul...ement-poultry/vitamin-deficiencies-in-poultry
https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poul...ement-poultry/mineral-deficiencies-in-poultry
(I don't have the knowledge to judge whether they are accurate, so you might need to cross-check the information with other sources before trusting it.)

I looked up calcium to phosphorus ratio and concluded they were not getting enough calcium. So I've been crushing raw egg shells and providing that free choice.

That seems like a reasonable thing to try. It is known that adult hens are able to self-regulate their calcium consumption, so chicks might be able to as well.

they went crazy over the eggshells like their bodies knew they needed it. That has leveled off now.

Have the symptoms improved since then?

The chicks might have more than one dificiency at the same time (which of course would make it harder to identify & treat them all.)

Half water/half whey for drink

Since you're doing experiments here, I would suggest providing water and whey in separate containers, and watching how much the chicks drink of each. They might do better with a higher or lower rate of whey.

Ground barley soaked in whey

Consider adding other grains, such as corn or wheat, and read up on various feed grains.

People have already done experiements on different grains in chicken feed, and have found that some grains work better than others. I frequently see recommendations that certain grains not be more than specific percentages of the diet. Adding the right supplements can change that, but you specifically did not want supplements. So you would probably be more interested in the studies being done in the first half of the 1900s, when they were using ingredients closer to their raw state, with fewer supplements.

A mat of grass from outside for grit/greens

Can you get them out on an actual pasture? Or provide larger amounts of this, plus other kinds of green plants?

Different plants have different levels of nutrients (including vitamins and minerals). So if they can select their own from a whole pasture, they may be able to get more of what they need. If you plan to have 50 or 100 laying hens on such a diet, you might need a very large pasture to provide enough greens, especially if they need specific plants rather than just "greens" in general.

 

[saysfaa]

... (they're 3 weeks old) but now about half of them are having serious walking issues. ... I looked up calcium to phosphorus ratio . ...My only rules are everything must be raw (no-soy) and no manufactured supplements. In other words, all the vitamins/minerals must come from raw foods in their diet. I haven't done so yet but I'm also considering starting a mealworm farm. Thanks for your help in advance, I look forward to your insights.

I think it is possible to feed a healthy diet that is raw and with no manufactured supplements -as long as you aren't going for practical or easy.

You can use the research that has gone into what chickens require and into each ingredient to figure out a healthy ration using your choice of ingredients rather than the commercially available options.

Walking issues can also be selenium deficiency, vtamin B deficiency, protein deficiency, manganese deficiency, as well as calcium and phosphorus.

Barley has a type of starch which, because of its chemical structure, cannot be easily digested by poultry. It also forms absorbs water in the digestive system to form a gel that reduces the availability of the nutrients in the rest of the diet. Some barley in the mix is good but not too much of it.
Even if both the calcium and the phosphorus are adequate and in balance with each other, neither can be used without adequate vitamin D.

 

[saysfaa]

After a few hours of sleep, I remember a few more things I thought of as I worked yesterday....

You can add a little bit of margin for error if you choose breeds (strains within breeds, these days) that are known for low production. One of the elements of high production is less sensitivity to factors that signal higher/lower production.

And by lowering stress levels - such as not crowding them, and giving them places to dust bath, roost, hide, exercise, and such.

The above types of things won't take the place of good nutrition; it just helps a little.

Going after the eggshells so much doesn't necessarily mean the eggshells were supplying what they need. It may be deficiencies driving them to eat something/anything edible.

Without the safety net of the manufactured supplements, It is even more important to learn about feeds and feeding. There is much less margin for errors. The "errors" can include the different nutrient compositions of a given feed ingredient as well as other kinds of errors. Barley is a good example. There are at least two kinds of starches in barley. One is harder for chickens to digest than the other. Some varieties, under some growing conditions, have 2% of that kind while others have nearly 30% of that kind. Not to imply the other kind of starch in barley is easy to digest compared to the starch from any other source.

Why barley? Why not wheat and corn?

I have a couple of guesses about why. Adding more restrictions (for any reason) about what you will use makes a difficult task even more difficult. Cost is not the only reason those two grains have been used so much for hundreds (probably thousands) of years.

Edit to fix typos/grammar

 

[saysfaa]

Correction. the methionine percentage is percent of the protein portion - not of the total.
Sorry, it is harvest season, I'm not going to do each one before the edit window closes. See the next page where U_Stormcrow did at least one if you want to see an example.

This is not a recipe. It is only a few ingredients used in unrealistic amounts to demonstrate the process of figuring out what ingredients might work.

How to formulate rations

If you get it only a little off, you probably won't notice the effects or will attribute the effects to something else. If a hen gets sick, is it because she was exposed to something or because her immune system is weak. If her comb gets frostbitten, is it because it was too cold or because her circulatory system was compromised. And so on.

Step 1, find the percent moisture
This website explains how

Step 2, find the nutritional value on a dry matter basis. The only really reliable way is to get a representative sample tested. Otherwise, Feedopedia is about the best one can reasonably get.

Step 3, calculate the amount of the nutrient in the amount of ingredient used in your batch of feed

Step 4, calculate the amount of each nutrient in 100 pounds of your mix (which is the same as Step 3 if your batch is 100 pounds but that takes more math. Or at least put more of the math earlier in the process.) This gives the percentage of that nutrient in the feed.

Step 5, compare the percentage in the feed to the percentage needed by the chick. Each nutrients has a minimum and a maximum but only one is given for many feeds because the other limit is not going to be approached if the basics are met.

Example: Barley, whey, beef, eggshells, mealworms,

Feedipedia, except fresh ground beef is from this website

Barley at 10% moisture with methionine at 1.7% on a dry matter basis.

100 pounds of barley x 0.1 is 90 pounds dry matter x 0.017 is 1.7 pounds of met

Whey at 95% moisture with met at 1.5% on a dry matter basis

100 pounds of whey x 5 pounds dry matter x 0.015 is 0.075 pounds of met

100 pounds of ground beef at 80% moisture with met at .... my source doesn't give it on a dry matter basis. It can be calculated but isn't needed here.

Met calculations for ground beef: 11% protein, 5.6 g of protein. Of which 140 mg is met. So 140 mg out of 5600 mg of protein is 2.5% of the protein portion is met. Rounding to 10% to make the math easier, 2.5% of 10% is 0.25% met. So 0.25 pounds in 100 pounds of ground beef.

Eggshells at 1.1% moisture with met at 2.5% on a dry matter basis

100 pounds of eggshells x 98.9 pounds dry matter x 0.025 is 2.47 pounds of met

Mealworms at 57.8% moisture with met at 1.5% on a dry matter basis

100 pounds of mealworms x 0.422 is 42.2 pounds dry matter x 0.015 is 0.633 pound of met

So in 500 pounds of feed, equal amounts of barley, whey, ground beef, and fresh mealworms results in
1.7 + 0.075 + 0.25 + 0.633 = 1.775 + 0.883 = 2.658 pounds of met. 7.016 in 1000 = 0.7% met, as fed

Chicks need 0.52% minimum. So this formula works for methionine.

Next, repeat for Lysine. If there is enough of these two, there is likely enough of all the other amino acids (basically, enough protein).

Next, repeat for energy, fat, fiber, calcium, and phosphorous.

If you don't use a vitamin and trace mineral mix, then also repeat the above process for each vitamin and each mineral

No guarantees I did all the math right. i struggle with math at the best of times.