Chicken Food recommendation for Melbourne, Australia? (And what are the protein requirements anyway?)

[tenaki]

Hi!

I'm in Melbourne, Australia and have been trying to figure out what to buy to feed the chooks with...

We've been giving them: https://www.petbarn.com.au/peckish-performance-poultry-layer-mix-18kg
And they're pretty happy with it (even though they mostly ignore the pellets and just eat all the grains)

It says it's 18% protein, so we figured it's what was *required*. They also get to free range a bit in our backyard, and I know we've seen them slurping up worms and other grubs.

Recently however, we've been hearing from friends who are feeding their own chooks with food that is anywhere from 15-17% protein, and their chooks are all still healthy and happy.

Some use this: https://www.lauckemills.com.au/products/category/QHGILBDD-red-hen-range/5447
Another uses this: https://www.bestfriendspets.com.au/p/528027-peters-free-range-poultry-mix-bird-food-20kg
Both of those are 15%.

Another uses this: https://www.greenvalleygrains.com/product-page/open-range-poultry-mix

Haven't been able to find how much protein that one has.

So what I'm trying to find out is...... Are there other Melbourne backyard chook owners here, and what do they feed their chooks?

And what *is* the required protein actually required in feed?
I've seen 18% as the bare minimum, but that's probably not strictly true. For one thing, given how my chooks are ignoring most of the pellets, I'm pretty sure they aren't getting the full 18% that the manufacturer tells me is in their food. I'm assuming that my chooks also get additional protein from other sources whilst free ranging?


Thank you!

 

[Sussex19]

This is what I use https://thevellagroup.com.au/product/category/poultry-grower-starter/
their layer feed it also good, if you only have hens.
I'll let more experienced people answer your other questions.

 

[The Backyard Bantams]

i like green valley grains premium poultry mix. Barastoc is good too, but expensive.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

ANSWER.

Total protein doesn't matter. Its used as an analog for what truly matters, by those who don't know enough, or care enough, to know better. Because its a useful analog, most people don't need to know better.

*IF* you assume that all chicken feeds are based on a corn/soy formulation, and *IF* you assume that all chicken feeds are in large part corn/soy (or at least primarily grain/soy), then comparing protein levels is a useful and simple way of getting at the figures which really matter, some of which couldn't be easily or inexpensively measured as recently as just 30 years ago.

But *IF* you make those assumptions, you are basically assuming you are int he United States, staring at the middle shelf of your local farm store, for the "traditional" Purina, Nutrena, DuMor, etc feeds bearing no buzz word labels like "organic", "vegan", "soy free", etc.

On a forum like this, with international posters, and a large numer of users of "specialty" feeds, simply comparing crude protein percentage can result in some erroneous conclusions.

What you really want to know is the type of your birds, the sex of your birds, and the age of your birds. Based on that, there are recommendations from recent studies which indicate the % of certain amino acids which make up that total crude protein amount which appears on the label.

In the US, where grain is (relatively) cheap, we use lots of medium nutrition ingredients to overshoot "minimum" protein levels in order to hit our amino acid targets. In the EU, they can use ingredients which result in much lower total crude protein levels, because they have supplimented with synthetic amino acids (the EU is at the cutting edge of that research currently) to hit the same targets. China and India aren't far behind. I've not seen enough labels from Australia to get a good feel for where they are in the scale of things - but even in the EU, one 15% protein feed is not the same as another 15% protein feed - plenty of suppliers count on consumer ignorance to put out inferior feeds which appear cosmetically similar in gross protein, fat, fiber, and calcium numbers.

Apologies for the seemingly complicated answer. In short, your confusion makes sense. Because the thing being compared (crude protein %) only indirectly relates to the thing you really want to know.