Chick Challenges DIY Feed

[Aambrus1]

I'm attempting to raise 50 chicks on a DIY feed that is completely raw. I have a niche market of potential customers that would value the eggs being produced this way and pay a nice premium. I am trying to stay away from legumes so here is what I fed for the first few weeks:
Ground barley soaked in whey
Raw ground beef
Half water/half whey for drink
A mat of grass from outside for grit/greens
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. They do not get any direct sunlight where I have them in the house which I am concerned about. 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. I have another batch of 50 chicks coming soon and wanted to see if anyone with knowledge/experience in DIY chick foods could help me prepare for success on the next batch. 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.

 

[Shadrach]

I'm attempting to raise 50 chicks on a DIY feed that is completely raw. I have a niche market of potential customers that would value the eggs being produced this way and pay a nice premium. I am trying to stay away from legumes so here is what I fed for the first few weeks:
Ground barley soaked in whey
Raw ground beef
Half water/half whey for drink
A mat of grass from outside for grit/greens
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. They do not get any direct sunlight where I have them in the house which I am concerned about. 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. I have another batch of 50 chicks coming soon and wanted to see if anyone with knowledge/experience in DIY chick foods could help me prepare for success on the next batch. 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.

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.

 

[WIchickMama]

I would agree with above, move to chick feed which will have everything they need. Some vitamins in water now might help. They don't need egg shells at 3 weeks.

 

[ChickyCh00k]

Please don't do this. It is EXTREMELY difficult and costly to make your own feed  correctly. You are already seeing the effects of a lack of proper nutrition on the current batch of chicks. Please buy some commercial feed, made by experts, to avoid further morbidity and/or mortality. This hurts my heart.

I hope @U_Stormcrow will weigh in here.

 

[Aambrus1]

Please don't do this. It is EXTREMELY difficult and costly to make your own feed  correctly. You are already seeing the effects of a lack of proper nutrition on the current batch of chicks. Please buy some commercial feed, made by experts, to avoid further morbidity and/or mortality. This hurts my heart.

I hope @U_Stormcrow will weigh in here.

I will continue with my endeavor in the belief there is a better way than what is being offered by commercial feed. I welcome any feedback that is encouraging in this endeavor and ask others to be understanding and open minded. Thank you for your time.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm attempting to raise 50 chicks on a DIY feed that is completely raw. I have a niche market of potential customers that would value the eggs being produced this way and pay a nice premium. I am trying to stay away from legumes so here is what I fed for the first few weeks:
Ground barley soaked in whey
Raw ground beef
Half water/half whey for drink
A mat of grass from outside for grit/greens
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. They do not get any direct sunlight where I have them in the house which I am concerned about. 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. I have another batch of 50 chicks coming soon and wanted to see if anyone with knowledge/experience in DIY chick foods could help me prepare for success on the next batch. 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.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't do this.

Putting chicken feed together is HARD. ADULT chickens can tolerate a poor diet to a point, but a balanced, nutritionally dense, diet is of critical importance to Hatchlings, becoming less critical as they age.

At a glance, it appears you understand that protein is important, and have leaned heavily into that singular nutritional factor, at the expense of all else. Your birds are suffering the consequences of it. So will your next batch. I also question why you would conclude, from diet and symptoms described, that your Ca/P ratio is off, and therefore the amount of Ca should be increased in the bird's diet???

With respect, I suggest its obvious that you lack the education and/or experience necessary to undertake this project, and should abandon it before you subject another 50 birds to such ill treatment.

 

[Thatscluckinggreat]

PLEASE, if you must attempt this...take a lot of time and learn the scientific side of what you want to accomplish here. The info is out there. Don't just experiment. There is no need to. That has already been done. It is hard to source everything you need in the right amounts. This is even more difficult when you start putting restrictions on what you are willing to include.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I will continue with my endeavor in the belief there is a better way than what is being offered by commercial feed. I welcome any feedback that is encouraging in this endeavor and ask others to be understanding and open minded. Thank you for your time.

Reality doesn't give one whit about your beliefs. May as well deny gravity.

Poultry Nutritional Science is one of the best studied topics on the planet. More is known about the most efficient and practical ways of feeding poultry than feeding humans. (We can, after all, ethically study the effects of diet on chickens in ways you can't on people).

Poultry is a key source of increased protein in the diet for much of the developing world, and most advanced countries already incorporate plenty of poultry into the diet. Governments understand that starving populations do not make well behaved citizens. So they study it. Don't like the US studies funded by big Ag? Read the EU studies. Don't trust them? Read the Chinese studies. The Studies out of India and Pakistan, the various North African Studies. The conclusions are a bit fuzzy at the edges (0.39% Methionine, or 0.42?, change feed at 10 weeks or 12 weeks, etc) , but there is widespread agreement on the core concepts.

Can you make a nutritionally balanced feed at home with effort, study, and some use of vitamin supplimentation (just as the commercial producers do)? ABSOLUTELY. Can you do it efficiently on a cost basis? Almost certainly not, absent unique circumstances. Can you do it at home without modern shipping to provide you distantly sourced ingredients? Almost certainly not, absent unique circumstances. Can you be confident of your final product? Lacking individual nutritional assays for your ingredients, NO. Can you do it with just three or four ingredients, none of which are blends or commercial nutrient powders? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Can you do it without Soy? Yes, but its harder and more expensive - that's why soy meal is so common a component in (US) blended chicken feeds. Its cheap, high protein, nutrient dense, low fat. Used to make up for nutritional deficiencies in the other grain components. All protein is not the same.

That's the reality. "I believe" and "I feel" in no way overcomes those issues.

This is all the assistance I plan to offer to this fool's errand. If you want to learn the nutritional needs of poultry at various life stages, there are plenty of resources (free resources even) available. Its mostly easy reading with a high school education in math, chemistry, and biology/botany. Once you have a command of that, you can move on to the much harder topic of meeting those needs with various dietary ingredients. By the way, some number of those ingredients benefit from cooking or other processing to remove anti-nutritional factors or otherwise mitigate the effects of tannins, trypsin inhibitors, beta-glucans, and a host of others.

{Bluntness intended. Your chickens are suffering more than your feelings will. ...and if your feelings are more important to you than your chickens? Then the time I have devoted here for the benefit of you and your flock is well and truly wasted.}

 

[Aambrus1]

I don't want to use commercial feed. I have a customer base that would value this product and I believe it is possible to achieve on a DIY raw diet without mineral supplements. To answer your question, ground beef is high in phosphorus and whey has moderate amounts of calcium. So i concluded calcium was low. Also they went crazy over the eggshells like their bodies knew they needed it. That has leveled off now.

 

[Aambrus1]

Reality doesn't give one whit about your beliefs. May as well deny gravity.

Poultry Nutritional Science is one of the best studied topics on the planet. More is known about the most efficient and practical ways of feeding poultry than feeding humans. (We can, after all, ethically study the effects of diet on chickens in ways you can't on people).

Poultry is a key source of increased protein in the diet for much of the developing world, and most advanced countries already incorporate plenty of poultry into the diet. Governments understand that starving populations do not make well behaved citizens. So they study it. Don't like the US studies funded by big Ag? Read the EU studies. Don't trust them? Read the Chinese studies. The Studies out of India and Pakistan, the various North African Studies. The conclusions are a bit fuzzy at the edges (0.39% Methionine, or 0.42?, change feed at 10 weeks or 12 weeks, etc) , but there is widespread agreement on the core concepts.

Can you make a nutritionally balanced feed at home with effort, study, and some use of vitamin supplimentation (just as the commercial producers do)? ABSOLUTELY. Can you do it efficiently on a cost basis? Almost certainly not, absent unique circumstances. Can you do it at home without modern shipping to provide you distantly sourced ingredients? Almost certainly not, absent unique circumstances. Can you be confident of your final product? Lacking individual nutritional assays for your ingredients, NO. Can you do it with just three or four ingredients, none of which are blends or commercial nutrient powders? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Can you do it without Soy? Yes, but its harder and more expensive - that's why soy meal is so common a component in (US) blended chicken feeds. Its cheap, high protein, nutrient dense, low fat. Used to make up for nutritional deficiencies in the other grain components. All protein is not the same.

That's the reality. "I believe" and "I feel" in no way overcomes those issues.

This is all the assistance I plan to offer to this fool's errand. If you want to learn the nutritional needs of poultry at various life stages, there are plenty of resources (free resources even) available. Its mostly easy reading with a high school education in math, chemistry, and biology/botany. Once you have a command of that, you can move on to the much harder topic of meeting those needs with various dietary ingredients. By the way, some number of those ingredients benefit from cooking or other processing to remove anti-nutritional factors or otherwise mitigate the effects of tannins, trypsin inhibitors, beta-glucans, and a host of others.

{Bluntness intended. Your chickens are suffering more than your feelings will. ...and if your feelings are more important to you than your chickens? Then the time I have devoted her for the benefit of you and your flock is well and truly wasted.}

Troll for the feed industry emphasis added