Cornish Thread

[kfacres]

Just curious...why do you think feeding meat and bone meal to chickens is a bad thing?

This is what I said.."My other point is feeding meat and bone meal to chickens makes about as much sense as feeding poultry litter to steers"

Who said I was against feeding either feed source?

In visiting the Joslin cattle processing facility they actually take the rumen content out and feed it back to steers up the road. Can't feed it to them for very long because it's to "hot" and will burn them out.

Feeding by product feedstuffs I have nothing against, as long as they are legal to use. But as I've harper on time and again... the average person has no place making their own rations

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

If you're not a nutritionist, and don't have a degree, or really any classes either-- then I suggest letting the professionals formulate rations.

I've thought a lot about the rations formulated for poultry, and I came to the conclusion that while the rations for commercial battery hens and for the cornish x. may very well deliver the most eggs or chicken for the cheapest possible price, they may not be what's best as a sole diet for my chickens. In fact it's probable that commercial rations are not really what's "best" for commercial breeds either, but your point is valid that you do have to know what you are feeding your chickens or nutrition- related problems due to deficiencies or excesses may occur.
My chickens are not the commercial crosses; and, my chickens free range. Those two factors alone make their needs different from the factory farmed chickens. I am of course concerned that free ranging is a mixed bag when it comes to nutrition and there is a real possibility of nutrient imbalances (calcium especially, and an incorrect calcium to phosphorus ratio) and vitamin deficiencies. I do use a non-gmo feed as a base, which the chickens always have access to as much as they want, but I don't hesitate to tweak it with the extras I believe are missing in a commercial diet. I don't feed cheap corn/barley scratch as I've heard horror stories from people who have fed too much and have ended up with nutrition problems. But, trying to get a straight answer about what's actually in commercial feed can be tricky. I prefer my egg yolks to be coloured by natural carotenoids, not synthetic ones.
My experience with dogs and the garbage kibble that's sold as "complete" nutrition and that joke of an AAFCO test has led me to distrust the large corporations that promise wholesome, good food, and barefaced lie about what they are really doing.

I don't give a hoot for sensitive people,or closed minds. Common sense would tell you the more you can approximate a natural diet,the better off you are. Fixing.g to start giving mine fish.

Fish is a great source of protein but from what I understand it can give meat /eggs a fishy flavour- the recommendation I believe is no more than 2-5% of the diet should be fish.

 

[JRNash]

@CanadianBuckeye,It will be a while before I start eating the eggs. I'm still in the growing and hatching phase. Can you imagine a chicken that tasted like catfish. Fried catfish yummmy

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

Fried catfish? Absolutely delicious!

 

[JRNash]

Hellbender,you mentioned Robins,it's amazing how prolific they are without professional help. We used to eat them till they started harping.g about mercury levels. Tasty.

 

[JRNash]

What would we call it?ficken?chish??

 

[JRNash]

@Kfacres you have a valid point about people going off half cocked. My 6wk old boilers recently came down with a respiratory infection.I believe in large part to the abnormal flood I've been experiencing on a weekly basis. When googling the symptoms, the first thing that popped up in a list of possibilities was MG. I immediately hit panic mode. After half a day running around lime a broiler minus it's head,I went BACK to the site and read the REST of the information and compared pictures. Put them on tetracycline,they are doing wayyyyy better. I'm NOT a vet. But with a little research and the helpful comments from people here at BYC,things are looking up.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

What would we call it?ficken?chish??

Hey, I like it!!!! Ficken chish! (sounds sort of like Fish and Chips if you say it just right)

(useful too if you get mad at them ;-)

 

[varidgerunner]

The problem with feed mixes, whether commercial or not, is that if your animals are only getting that food, they are going to have whatever imbalance that feed sets them up for. Just because a nutritionist says it is complete doesn't make it so. Your animals can tell you everything you need to know if you know how to look at them.. What is lacking in this day and time is not people with lots of paper to prove how much they know about nutrition, it's people with a keen eye for animal husbandry. Many commercial feeds are guilty of not having the right balance, and more often, not the right TYPE of nutrients.

Chickens are easy though, just turn them loose and they will find what they need, when they need it. Provided you have a landscape fit for chickens and chickens that are fit for landscape. To the idea that meat is not a good or natural food for chickens, somewhere there is a wild red junglefowl scavenging a leopard kill that would disagree.

 

[QueenMisha]

Hmm. I see we're having a nutrition discussion over here? My 2 cents, since I've been studying the scientific (as well as anecdotal) literature on the subject recently:

A lot of people have the problem of believing that you have to either mix your own feed all the time or use solely a commerical ration. Not true! I'm a big advocate of commercial rations (and don't you dare say it's got any thing to do with Purina or their money - I'd sooner feed my birds dirt than that crap-feed! I'm Bar Ale all the way) but I know that even nutritionists aren't perfect.

Commercial rations are designed commercially! The standard 16% layer feed that people buy is a trickle down from what is fed to the billions of industry standard White Leghorns and Brown-Egg Hybrids. And if you have a flock that consists of only these breeds, then it is really the ideal feed for them! Same thing with a ~20% broiler ration for the Cornish Rock hybrids. But even the standard nutrition manuals, created on a base of scientific research and study, and used by feed mills to formulate feeds, warn that beyond these breeds variances can occur. A Barred Rock, a Cornish, a Gamefowl may not have the same nutritional requirements as a White Leghorn, and in fact they probably don't!

But commercial rations are also great for generalization. A lot of study goes into the feeding of the most engineered animal in entire world. These studies are based on companies and conglomerates trying to determine how little they can put in to get a big return, but they are also based on maintaining the health of the birds! A poorly fed bird don't grow or lay. And please remember that anecdotal evidence is NOT an end-all, be-all! Moderate and severe nutritional imbalances show themselves on the outside soon enough, but what about the little stuff that goes a long way? The extra % that's taking a toll on the kidneys, the liver, the bird's muscle and bone? Slowly eating away at the bird's lifespan? And without a single outward symptom. In studies, cocks were fed a layer ration with around 5% calcium. For the record the calcium requirement of a SCW Leghorn cockerel is 0.02%. None of the birds showed any external signs of illness, and yet more than half of them had the left sides of their kidneys significantly enlarged (a sign of growth to make up for prior damage), and 7% had actual kidney stones present. Now issues resulting from feeding cocks layer ration for their whole lives are quite rare, but who's to say these birds aren't living to 8 when they could've lived to 12? 15? Unfortunately no long term studies have been conducted. And this goes for all imbalances, not just calcium!

The point I'm trying to make is that the height of poultry nutrition can be reached by marrying anecdotal knowledge - the old ways of free ranging and home mixing - with modern scientific knowledge, and commercial rations. Use a commerical base, but tweak it as is fit for your breed. Just don't tweak too far.