Corn/Soy/Organic Feed

[chickchickchooray]

My husband and I are going fully organic with our chickens and are currently using Mile Four organic feed (no soy, no corn).

Of course, it's a pretty penny to maintain the cost of the feed, and I saw some cheaper organic feeds on the market WITH corn/soy, so the question is...

If you're pro soy/corn in chicken feed, can you explain why? Also, is going organic on corn/soy not much better than the regular store feed?

The point of going this route is to get fully organic, healthy eggs/meat, which is hard to find in the store. Trying not to mess up that balance while also giving our birds the best possible life.

If you have opinions on Mile Four, a newer chicken feed company, I would also love to know. Our flock has had no respiratory issues whatsoever, beautiful feathering, zero cases of poopy butt, etc. We are not in the egg production stage so I can't say how those are looking just yet!

FYI - our flock free ranges during the day.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

So....

The answer is Methionine.

Met is one of the limiting amino acids, because chickens can't produce enough of it on their own - they have to get it from diet. A chicken that doesn't get enough underperforms. There is NO substitute.

Chickens (and all animals) need Methionine in their diet. Its the #1 most critical amino acid for protein building, because essentially every protein begins with Met. (For many proteins, the Met is cleaved off before its completed, but all animal proteins start with Met in the building process - think of it like the engine in a train.)
Growing chickens need far more Met than adults - its associated with connective tissues - skin, tendons, the entirety of the digestive system (which is a key component of a chicken's immune system), etc. Old studies but the Met requirements for adult layers at 0.3%. Newer studies suggest a figure closer to 0.4% is optimum, with adolescents, meat birds, and adolescent meat birds all being significantly higher. Up in the 0.7% to 0.9% range.

I know that doesn't sound like much, but there is NO plant source with Met levels that high. NONE.

Its so critical that if you look on the bag of feed's ingredients label, in most cases, you will see the ingredient dl-Methionine. That's synthetic Met. Its critical enough that it can appear on a feed bag carrying thew "Organic" Label. Mile Four uses dl-Methionine in some of their feeds, and their Met levels are still sub-par, across the board, in spite of being 5x more expensive than my vastly nutritionally superior local (non Organic) feed. (the amount of synthetic Met which can be included is limited by law, here in the US). That's a choice you make.

What if you don't want to use dl-Met, or you can't use enough dl-Met to make up for the deficiencies of your other ingredients?

Then your next best bet is a nutrient dense animal protein source (fish meal, menhaden [fish] meal, shrimp meal, crab meal, porcine blood meal), etc, some of which are available with the Organic label, an insect source (mealworms, BSFL, etc) which are unfortunately also high fat, or a concentrated plant protein whose fat content has been largely removed. The best (cheap) plant protein source for Met? Soy meal. The process of removing the oil from soybeans leaves a highly concentrated plant protein with levels of Met high enough to compensate for the low levels present in peas, wheat, corn, and other grains.

There are other legumes with moderately high levels of Met once their oils have been removed (peanut is a good example), but none so readily available (or as highly concentrated) as are found in soy meal.

Or if you are made of gold, you can use brewer's yeast. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of brewer's yeast. Brewer's yeast and a good soy meal have similar Met levels, pound per pound - so (in that respect alone) they are 1:1 substitutions for one another. Since good wheat or corn has 2/3 the (old) minimum recommended levels for adult layers, and peas, chick peas, etc are about 5/6 the old minimums, any feed recipe based organic veggies only will need soy meal (or brewer's yeast) at between 16 and 30% inclusion rates to hit Met targets, absent synthetics, for adult laying hens, levels higher still to reach optimum targets for growing birds or meaties. Which is why you won't find brewer's yeast on many commercial feed bags - and certainly not as one of the top three ingredients.

My opinion, based on published studies and nutritional assays only.

 

[saysfaa]

If you're pro soy/corn in chicken feed, can you explain why? Also, is going organic on corn/soy not much better than the regular store feed?

The point of going this route is to get fully organic, healthy eggs/meat, which is hard to find in the store. Trying not to mess up that balance while also giving ...

I guess I'm effectively pro soy/corn in chicken feed because I haven't found a remotely practical alternative.

I don't like being conventional, I'd much rather find some cool alternative way to do most things. I would like it to be better in some way, though, or at least as good.

And I don't particularly like some of the aspects of modern food production and distribution such as huge fields of one species of plants and the degree of reliance on so few species in our diets. Most of the commercially available alternatives to soy/corn don't help much, if any, with such things though.

I see no advantage to food labeled organic these days. The term has good roots - back when Lord Northbourne and Rodale developed the idea. And I think it meant something worthwhile until about the late 1980s or early 1990s. Now, it is so expensive (in time mostly, somewhat in other ways) to jump through all the hoops to get certified that many farmers who essentially farm organically don't get certified. This source has a sketchy name but it describes the history of organic certification pretty close to how I remember it (as an interested observer) from Rodale's Organic Gardening Magazines from the sixties and seventies (which included some history) on. So I used it to save a lot of typing here. I haven't read what else it says about anything and I don't necessarily agree with all of the author's goals.

Another aspect of organic these days is the scare tactics used to market certified organic products - like the gross exaggerations of the amounts of round-up in our food supply. The scaremongers seem to think if it can be measured then it is excessive. Anyway, the source of the one I see referenced most often says they picked 150 parts per billion as "an adequate margin of safety." As opposed to the 30 parts per million the EPA uses - which does say how they determine safe levels of such substances: They find what level gives no effects in lab animals and add an additional margin of error of 100 time or 1000 times, depending on the substance.

 

[Truthhurts21]

So....

The answer is Methionine.

Met is one of the limiting amino acids, because chickens can't produce enough of it on their own - they have to get it from diet. A chicken that doesn't get enough underperforms. There is NO substitute.

Chickens (and all animals) need Methionine in their diet. Its the #1 most critical amino acid for protein building, because essentially every protein begins with Met. (For many proteins, the Met is cleaved off before its completed, but all animal proteins start with Met in the building process - think of it like the engine in a train.)
Growing chickens need far more Met than adults - its associated with connective tissues - skin, tendons, the entirety of the digestive system (which is a key component of a chicken's immune system), etc. Old studies but the Met requirements for adult layers at 0.3%. Newer studies suggest a figure closer to 0.4% is optimum, with adolescents, meat birds, and adolescent meat birds all being significantly higher. Up in the 0.7% to 0.9% range.

I know that doesn't sound like much, but there is NO plant source with Met levels that high. NONE.

Its so critical that if you look on the bag of feed's ingredients label, in most cases, you will see the ingredient dl-Methionine. That's synthetic Met. Its critical enough that it can appear on a feed bag carrying thew "Organic" Label. Mile Four uses dl-Methionine in some of their feeds, and their Met levels are still sub-par, across the board, in spite of being 5x more expensive than my vastly nutritionally superior local (non Organic) feed. (the amount of synthetic Met which can be included is limited by law, here in the US). That's a choice you make.

What if you don't want to use dl-Met, or you can't use enough dl-Met to make up for the deficiencies of your other ingredients?

Then your next best bet is a nutrient dense animal protein source (fish meal, menhaden [fish] meal, shrimp meal, crab meal, porcine blood meal), etc, some of which are available with the Organic label, an insect source (mealworms, BSFL, etc) which are unfortunately also high fat, or a concentrated plant protein whose fat content has been largely removed. The best (cheap) plant protein source for Met? Soy meal. The process of removing the oil from soybeans leaves a highly concentrated plant protein with levels of Met high enough to compensate for the low levels present in peas, wheat, corn, and other grains.

There are other legumes with moderately high levels of Met once their oils have been removed (peanut is a good example), but none so readily available (or as highly concentrated) as are found in soy meal.

Or if you are made of gold, you can use brewer's yeast. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of brewer's yeast. Brewer's yeast and a good soy meal have similar Met levels, pound per pound - so (in that respect alone) they are 1:1 substitutions for one another. Since good wheat or corn has 2/3 the (old) minimum recommended levels for adult layers, and peas, chick peas, etc are about 5/6 the old minimums, any feed recipe based organic veggies only will need soy meal (or brewer's yeast) at between 16 and 30% inclusion rates to hit Met targets, absent synthetics, for adult laying hens, levels higher still to reach optimum targets for growing birds or meaties. Which is why you won't find brewer's yeast on many commercial feed bags - and certainly not as one of the top three ingredients.

My opinion, based on published studies and nutritional assays only.

May I ask what feed you use. We have been feeding new country organics but after price increases I'm done paying the premium. Our local small feed stores have a decent selection of non organic non GMO if that even really means anything.

 

[Kiki]

May I ask what feed you use. We have been feeding new country organics but after price increases I'm done paying the premium. Our local small feed stores have a decent selection of non organic non GMO if that even really means anything.

You didn't ask me directly but here goes:

If your birds are laying age then basically any LAYER type crumble or pelleted feed your feed store sells should be ok.

Most preventable feed related problems happen because people over feed treats or use a whole grain type feed that gives the birds the option to choose what to eat and not eat.

Brand name of the feed isn't too important.
The type (layer/chick feed) of feed and how it is made (crumble/pellet) is more important.

 

[Geena]

To each their own, but it boggles my mind that anyone would pay $90 for a bag of chicken feed. Here I am pissing and moaning about paying $25 a bag.

 

[Mosey2003]

I go out of my way to avoid anything labeled organic or non-GMO. Pure marketing ploy, in my opinion. I've never seen a problem with corn or soy, either.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

May I ask what feed you use. We have been feeding new country organics but after price increases I'm done paying the premium. Our local small feed stores have a decent selection of non organic non GMO if that even really means anything.

I'm feeding a local Mill, Harrell Milling, which mass produces for a number of commercial ops in the AL/N FL/SW GA area. If you are used to reading Organic This,Organic That, the HMC label will scare you. Almost no ingredient is identified (ok, its not THAT bad, but there are a number of meals and by-products).

OTOH, I pay $12.95/50# for layer, and $16.25/50# for 24% grower feed, both of which have good to very good Met and Lys levels (though not as good as they were pre-pandemic) for the "type" of formulation. Since that's roughly half what I would pay at the local farm store (still), I'm willing to overlook some vagueness, so long as the guaranteed nutrition continues to be there, and the birds perform well on it.

 

[Chickandroo]

Actually soy causes health issues:
https://explore.globalhealing.com/5-ways-soy-upsets-hormone-balance/

 

[R Wind]

I'm feeding a local Mill, Harrell Milling, which mass produces for a number of commercial ops in the AL/N FL/SW GA area. If you are used to reading Organic This,Organic That, the HMC label will scare you. Almost no ingredient is identified (ok, its not THAT bad, but there are a number of meals and by-products).

OTOH, I pay $12.95/50# for layer, and $16.25/50# for 24% grower feed, both of which have good to very good Met and Lys levels (though not as good as they were pre-pandemic) for the "type" of formulation. Since that's roughly half what I would pay at the local farm store (still), I'm willing to overlook some vagueness, so long as the guaranteed nutrition continues to be there, and the birds perform well on it.

@U_Stormcrow We're looking for options for feed -- and a foraging seed mix for a plot this Summer, also the option to make our own sprouting mix aka Edible Acres youtube videos
Do you think I could get feed from Harrell Milling in North Alabama? I can't find any "locations sold at" on their website. Also, have prices dramatically increased since you posted these in January? (Late April now.)

Local feed store / mill buys from Guntersville mill - Faithway Mills - and their 16% is 16.99 here; 22% "super layer" is 18.75/50lb.

Appreciate guidance - we're new, our 6 Rhode Island Reds are just starting to lay.
I understand we have to be careful about balance, vitamins, and I now hear the concern that chickens will pick and choose and not eat all the nutrition they need as a result. (Hadn't thought of that, don't really know chickens yet.) I try to eat whole foods myself, so I find myself concerned about all the over-processed ingredients in these mixes. (I have seen what a travesty that has caused in dogs and cats over decades.)

Hope to help by allowing foraging (protected) and sprouting. We can't free range. I realize you just said you've got guaranteed nutrition, and that's valid too. Just trying to find our way. Thanks!

[ EDIT: I came in mid-thread via the search engine, thought there were only three posts or so in this thread -- and I now realize there's a whole lot more in this thread to read. Forgive me if I've totally missed a lot. ]