Chick starter food out of stock, need advice

[RememberTheWay]

You can start the boiled egg any time, just squash it with a fork and mix it with some of the dry chick starter crumble.

For the homemade yoghurt I would wait at least until they are 2-3 weeks old and only use small amounts to mix with a bit of chick starter crumble.
Only prepare small amounts each time so it will be eaten within ~20-30 minutes.
Any leftovers should be taken out immediately as it can spoil easily with the additional heat source im thr brooder.

I give raw milk to our starts at day 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, and 45. Then Periodically, randomly after that for the remainder of their lives. It seeds proper gut health and helps to exclude bad bacteria in the gut because it's full of the good ones already. It goes a long way in helping to prevent coccidiosis as well.

 

[BDutch]

I give raw milk to our starts at day 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, and 45. Then Periodically, randomly after that for the remainder of their lives. It seeds proper gut health and helps to exclude bad bacteria in the gut because it's full of the good ones already. It goes a long way in helping to prevent coccidiosis as well.

First time I read that raw milk would help to exclude bad bacteria in the gut. And I have been reading chicken articles and BYC info for 10 years. I couldn’t find anything on this subject in my own language with google search.
Is there an official research about benefits of giving raw milk to chicks?

One thing I did find about raw milk was this:
This raw, unpasteurized milk can carry dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria, which are responsible for causing numerous foodborne illnesses. Decades ago, pasteurization of milk was adopted as a basic public health measure to kill dangerous bacteria. 5 mrt 2024
Raw Milk | FDA

 

[Altairsky]

I feed my chickens colostrum when available. There is nothing in this world more nutritious than raw colostrum and raw eggs.

Pasteurization of milk is necessary for the milk industry to make bad quality milk safe and turn milk into a long lasting beverage - which frankly is not milk anymore - that can be easily stored, branded and commercialized.

Freshly milked raw milk is 100% safe today in developed countries. Sanitary checks and milk analysis are done daily. If they find even a mosquito poop, they're gonna become obnoxious. Last year they claimed that we had traces of antibiotics in the milk. It was not possible. In the end it was their mistake but in the meantime they blocked our stable for days and we had to rent a refrigerated tank truck to store the blocked lot of milk.
I drink raw milk with no issue. I also make myself cappuccino by squeezing a cow's nipple directly into my coffee cup, and it's the most heavenly thing in the world.
Yes, city people who grew up inside a sterile petri dish, eating sterile ultra-processed foods their entire life are probably gonna get explosive diarrhea if they try raw milk, but that's not the milk's fault

In the meantime, the safe, pasteurized milk from the grocery stores...
https://www.icomplai.com/news/dairy...ustic-soda-and-peroxide-found-in-spoiled-milk

 

[Perris]

for clarification, the wow is for the item in the link; not the comments on raw milk.

 

[Altairsky]

Raw Milk | FDA

I don't believe those who take money from the big food companies and big pharma. FDA, EMA, AIFA, they're all the same.

Safety of raw milk
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7019599/

Benefits of bovine colostrum:
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2024/fb/d3fb00256j

I'd also add, since chickens often eat the most disgusting things (worms and seed fragments inside manure cakes for example) I don't think raw milk will ever represent a health hazard for them!

As for the "raw milk improving the good bacteria in the gut", all I know is that milk bacteria lives inside cows. They don't live long inside humans. This includes all the yoghurt lactobacillus and bifidobacterium which, IIRC, need 40°C to thrive. Yoghurt only improve the human's gut health *temporary* and for the benefits to last the yoghurt products need to be consumed often.
Therefore, anyone suffering from gut dysbiosis need to take human-specific strains of beneficial bacteria.
No idea about their effects on a chicken digestive system.

 

[Bawkbok]

Yes, city people who grew up inside a sterile petri dish, eating sterile ultra-processed foods their entire life are probably gonna get explosive diarrhea if they try raw milk, but that's not the milk's fault

Well, there are many of us poor souls "city people" who don't live near a cattle rancher or know anyone with cows and do not have access to raw milk. Squeezing a teat into my coffee mug sounds divine, if only we ALL could live that way ---- but ---- there's not enough land to go around for the 8 billion people on this planet.

 

[Altairsky]

Not all city people grow up on a sterile room. But some of them are absolutely obsessed with disinfectants and made their immune system really lazy. For those specific peole raw milk can be dangerous.

 

[HollowOfWisps]

First time I read that raw milk would help to exclude bad bacteria in the gut. And I have been reading chicken articles and BYC info for 10 years. I couldn’t find anything on this subject in my own language with google search.
Is there an official research about benefits of giving raw milk to chicks?

One thing I did find about raw milk was this:
This raw, unpasteurized milk can carry dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria, which are responsible for causing numerous foodborne illnesses. Decades ago, pasteurization of milk was adopted as a basic public health measure to kill dangerous bacteria. 5 mrt 2024
Raw Milk | FDA

The problem is the FDA picks and chooses. I grew up in a small community where everyone drank raw milk because everyone had farms. I do not know of a single person getting sick from raw milk. However, my family got salmonella from store bought produce, neighbors got E. coli from store bought produce and my cousins son was one of those kids who got lead poisoning from the store bought applesauce incident a year or two ago. When I was pregnant I was told I couldn’t eat raw honey because of the risk of botulism to my son. Guess what? There are virtually no cases of botulism being passed to the fetus from raw honey and more recent research has proven it’s almost impossible. I also was told not to eat lunch meat because of listeria. There are around only 2500 cases of listeria reported here in America from lunch meat. You know what I was told to eat as much as I could stomach of? Fresh produce and yet there are over 45 million cases of E. coli reported from fresh produce in the US each year with I believe it is around 150,000 resulting in hospitalization. Another example is when the media was touting that you shouldn’t collect your own seeds in case a dangerous hybrid was created through cross pollinating. This was mainly due to the toxic squash poisoning. They coincidentally left out that more then half of the cases of toxic squash poisoning occurred from store bought produce.

 

[Bawkbok]

I ate dirt as a kid and I'm still here.......

 

[BDutch]

When I was a kid I grew up on a farm with cows, pigs, cats, a dog, a horse and bantam chickens. My mother always cooked the milk. She told me it was dangerous to drink raw milk and never gave any to the chickens.

When I was 10 years old the farm changed into a pig factory (factory farming) which I hated as a teenager. 10 years later I turned into a citizen. I was glad to leave the farm (the animal abuse) behind me and became a vegetarian.

General advice for pregnant women is not to eat cheese made with raw milk because it’s dangerous for the foetus.