Chicken Feed Recipes, Articles and Systems

[Folly's place]

The above law, with reasons, is a good thing, except for the part about home table scraps, IMO. Maybe you don't remember the awful hoof and mouth disease outbreak, or understand the very real risk of African swine fever, or historically trichinosis in pigs, not to mention TB, and BSE.
It's impractical, and probably government over reach, to fuss about home raised chickens though. BUT getting scraps from restaurants and feeding them as is? Horrible idea!
Mary

 

[rjohns39]

Here are some of the recipes I've picked up along the way

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Are you not allowed to feed meat meal/blood meal to your back yard chickens in the US/Europe?
Most bagged feed here doesn't have it (except one brand) but it is readily available to be added to own-mixed feeds. I use it as an essential component in my feed recipe.

"meat scraps" are not allowed. Its a term of art for a rather ambiguous collection of bits. When the USDA banned its inclusion, they left the door wide open for the inclusion of more specifically sourced ingredients.

"Porcine Blood Meal", "Blood and Bone Meal", "Bone Meal", "Crab Meal", "Shrimp Meal", Menhaden Fish Meal", "Poultry By-product Meal" and a host of others are allowed in US feed mixes.

I know that, just looking at the mix, one immediately asks "what's the difference?" between, say, "meat scraps" and "blood and bone meal" or "poultry by-product meal", and the answer (largely) is that USDA regulates the contents of the latter, but not the former.

and for those trying to rework an old recipe based on "meat scraps", the old sources I've read put it pretty consistently around 55% protein, 2-3% fiber, 10% fat. Modern "Meat and Bone Meal" tends to be a close substitute, but watch your phosphorus and calcium numbers.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

My understanding is the outbreak in the UK was caused by illegally imported meat that was being used by catering industry, with the waste food making it to the hogs in the UK. In the USA hog slop is still made using restaurant waste that is cooked again then fed to them… Dirty Jobs had an episode on it. Makes me wonder if the folks in the UK did not recook the waste food properly. The diseases are very bad I agree, but I hope the backyard small flock keepers in the UK can get a reprieve on this rule, as it does not make a lot of logical sense.

Yeah I think it is all about wording, terminology and labeling laws in the USA more than anything. I mean the FDA allows humans to eat some pretty nasty meat parts as long as it is labeled certain ways, same for the animals in animal feed.

Thanks U_Stormcrow for the break down on % of nutrition the old recipes maybe indicating.

Sometimes people want to mix their own feed for religious reasons as well. In Israel you can get commercially made feeds that are Passover safe, but not here. Even the zoo animals in Israel are on special diets for Passover.

 

[Folly's place]

In part it's about the cooking, however the mad cow disease prions don't 'die' in cooking, it takes a flamethrower, at least, to render them gone.
It's reasonable, IMO, to be paranoid, thinking about prion diseases. Here in the USA we have chronic wasting disease in deer, another prion disease, which so far appears to not affect humans. Ugh!
Mary

 

[Perris]

The above law, with reasons, is a good thing, except for the part about home table scraps, IMO. Maybe you don't remember the awful hoof and mouth disease outbreak, or understand the very real risk of African swine fever, or historically trichinosis in pigs, not to mention TB, and BSE.
It's impractical, and probably government over reach, to fuss about home raised chickens though. BUT getting scraps from restaurants and feeding them as is? Horrible idea!
Mary

I do remember them, and agree they were awful. But chickens were not involved. I do not understand why pigs and poultry are treated as one in this regard. Nor do I see any justification for the sweeping blanket coverage (e.g. all meat protein); it seems to me to be a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
And I agree about distinguishing between commercial operations and backyard chickens. Other relevant legislation draws a line at 50 birds (e.g. no need to register the flock below that number), and I think a similar distinction should apply elsewhere, including to giving table scraps to backyard birds that are not being sold on to the public to eat.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

In part it's about the cooking, however the mad cow disease prions don't 'die' in cooking, it takes a flamethrower, at least, to render them gone.
It's reasonable, IMO, to be paranoid, thinking about prion diseases. Here in the USA we have chronic wasting disease in deer, another prion disease, which so far appears to not affect humans. Ugh!
Mary

There are no known prion diseases in chickens, at least. Though eating the brain and spinal cord of almost any animal is generally considered "icky", and of course, that's where the abnormal protein strands we call prions are concentrated, I save my concern for known risks first - there are enough on the plate already that I have little time for purely speculative sources.

/edit and they don't "die" because they aren't alive. They have to be denatured - high heat being one way to do so.

 

[Folly's place]

That's why 'die' was in quotes!
Being paranoid, I'm not convinced that other prion diseases won't appear; I'm aware of four .
Mary

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405654518300581

Study on Fermented feed

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Feeding method study for egg layers https://www.researchgate.net/public...cavenging_Condition_in_a_Tropical_Environment