Demand that the hatchery you order your chicks from this year:

[Resolution]

yes I think it is a vegetarian feed. I'll have to ask the guy that makes it. I'm getting a lot of eggs from my layer coop, Average of 24 eggs from 30 hens. I do throw in some animal protein here and there. Most my wyandottes aren't old enough to lay yet. I spend a lot of time with my birds and listen and watch, so if there is going to be a problem I can catch it fast. My worst pecking problem was caused by to many pretty roosters that I didn't want to eat and couldn't sell... Freezers full now and feathers are growing back

The issue with a vegetarian diet fed to an omnivore and one that is naturally developed from the curvature of the beak down to the scratching nails on each toe, the muscles in the gizzard and the enzymes in the gut all point to millions of years of evolution resulting in a morphoology hard wired for the ingestion of animal protein - the issue is that eventually hens that have thrived on a typical vegetarian diet will eventually require some nutrients they simply can't obtain from their vegetarian diet. It's not an issue of protein levels- its an issue of what range available amino acids is available in their daily maintenance ration. A proper animal protein supplement is suggested for breeding birds to ensure the most healthy chicks and naturally those that will not develop organ problems or cancer when just 2-3 years old.

Soy makes up a huge percent of what goes into commercial feed. Soy is only poorly digested by chickens. Most of it is actually pooped out - according to just about every amino acid study I've seen published in the Journal of Applied Poultry Research or related publications. Something like 40% of the soy fed to chickens is passed through the digestive system undigested because, I'll reiterate, it's a protected protein- a crude protein- that is not particularly digestible. The digestibility of crude protein in soy is something like 50-60% . The birds have to gorge all day to ingest enough to meet their bare requirements- and this is nowhere near an optimal diet but a reasonably nutritious one. In contrast to soy. Insects. even those covered in thick shells of chitin are upwards of 90% digestible. Grains are well digested as are most cereals- it's just this legume that is hard on their digestive systems. But commercial lay hens have been selectively bred to subsist on soy based feeds since the 50's- but I'll repeat once again- A. this was not round up ready soy B. soy was but one ingredient in a diet rich in animal proteins and fat, which guaranteed a complete diet C. farms kept their birds for years longer than they do today. D. that genetic stock would not have existed if it were maintained on the diets we use today. Since the late 1990's experiments began using GMO soy plenty made its way into feed formulations- nevertheless, it was not legal to use this specific form of round up ready soy in livestock feed until last year. This year marks the first year that a still more potent form of this scary if amazing crop is being introduced into the food chain.

I'm not against it. I'm not for it. I'm just alerting people reading this to what it is.

.
And guess what, this increased pesticide load on these GM food crops ends up on your dinner plate, and ends up in the feed given to feedlot animals. So your milk, eggs, chicken and beef are all likely tainted with a lifetime supply of foods either saturated in pesticides or genetically altered to internally produce pesticides.
There is also evidence suggesting that this pesticide-producing corn, soybean and canola continues to produce pesticide once it's inside you (or a feedlot animal), colonizing your gut bacteria and genetically altering it to also produce pesticide within your own cells.
In essence, you become a pesticide producing organism. And do I even need to tell you this pesticide is harmful to your health?
This is both horrifying and perfectly legal, although it clearly violates the spirit if not that actual letter of the Delaney Clause of 1958, an amendment passed by the US Congress to protect a safe US food supply, which states:

"The Secretary of the Food and Drug Administration shall not approve for use in food any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man, or, after tests, found to induce cancer in animals."​

Using the interpretation of "chemical additive" in the broadest sense to include living organisms whose DNA has been altered to produce pesticide (possibly inside your body) through man-made biological experimentation, then GM crops internally producing pesticides simply must fall under the purview of the Delaney Clause -- but to date GM crops have not been tested beyond a few days time and currently present absolutely zero long-term evidence that their altered DNA does not lead to cancer in either man or animals.
When in fact pesticides have for years been linked to cancer, along with a host of other diseases from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's to miscarrages.

There's some hyperbole in that quoted passage but the facts are solid. The new GMO soy is not only round up ready-it produces its own insecticide. You don't eat it every day as the foundation of your nutrition like your chickens do. This thread is discussing what the use of this material may have on breeding stock- already exhausted from producing hatching eggs. It's energy intensive to produce an egg. Better food better birds.

 

[kathyinmo]

Honestly, I WISH I could find organic, non-soy poultry feed. I really do..... If I could find it, it would cost a small fortune.

 

[NixNoodleNumbat]

I don't get hatchery chicks. I am lucky, there are a fair few farms around here, and I can get more than enough chicks from them.

 

[TastesLikeChkn]

WE get organic here for $40 a 50lb bag, $55 for the soy free organic when you can find it. I read about $12 to $14 prices and wish I were happily ignorant of knowing the difference sometimes.

I try to buy everything I eat organic as I find I am a bit sensitive to the newer pesticides, it has become a more significant part of my budget.

Over on the hatching of grocery store eggs, aren't there some replies about malformed chicks due to deficient food? We got one chick that is in runt shape with non developed feather patches. What else would cause that?

 

[Duramaxgirl]

Wow thanks for the information. I'm not surprised that they finally legalized this new round up soy. One must look out for ones own family. The government is not out to watch for the peoples best interest only pad their pockets. Which is what this is all about...money...
Ok I'll stop now.

 

[Resolution]

Slept on things- decided to try and change the title of the this thread to "Call your Hatchery". Demand is a very strong word and it's not the tone intended, drumming up a bit of feisty replies that are wandering a bit off topic. To be sure, I don't use organic feed at most farms. It's simply not feasible. Profit margins for our working farms are quite small when dealing with poultry. We've adopted more sustainable protocols over the years and save money by not utilising soft feeds. On Martha's Vineyard where egg and meat sales are not an objective but rather feeding families, we do use organic and in order to make that affordable we are obliged to use cheaper commodities -organic corn, organic oats, which are cheaper and supplement with a small percentage of kibble. We don't use organic scratch grain because it's too expensive but do grow crops that ameliorate the winter diet and the birds have free range year around down here.

Getting back to hatcheries. I'd like to return to the issue of supply and demand for a moment. I get the sense that half the peeps that have written in assume that I'm down on hatcheries. that I'm criticizing hatcheries, and/or down on soy. None of these assumptions would be accurate. Hatcheries only want to sell healthy chicks. They love their customers and love their poultry. The issue is the demand for baby chicks and ducklings, poults and keats grows exponentially every single year. My friends that actually own hatcheries keep me informed of these things as well as requesting assistance with problems certain breeds have had in producing enough eggs to sustain the demand. Some breeds are actually being fazed out in a few catalogs because the major hatcheries that drop ships for them cannot get production high enough to sustain demand. These are important old heritage breeds that prove to be more sensitive to the makeup of their feed than others, like the new heritage egg production and broiler strains so many people rely on heavily. This is unfortunate because the old heritage breeds are likely going to live to a ripe old age. Old heritage breeds tend to produce eggs and chicks for quite a few years more than the production strains, which are just not designed to live or produce for more than a few seasons. This is why egg farmers are obliged to replace their production strains with such frequency, which is not a sustainable practice.

It's reaffirming to learn that so many people hatch their own or purchase from reputable breeders. Of course this has always been the case for poultier but not often the new hobbyist nor the small family farm and certainly not the farms that produce hundreds of eggs per week to your local farmers market.

Someone wrote me personally asking about this new soybean product. I'll answer to that here. Every month, feed producers like myself, receive commodity magazines and livestock feed journals the former loaded in advertisements and the latter with commentary and debate. Far from being alarmist, the trend is to embrace new technologies that increase yield and profit for feed commodity agrobusiness. When it comes to producing food for a global population all this discussion we are entitled to here is off. There's simply no point in pushing against a surging tide well above our heads. People like myself work to get my arms around the Cargills of the world and convince them- not through inflammatory rhetoric or confrontation but rather through meaningful dialogue the effects these products may be having on the long-term health and genetic diversity of hatchery stock- and on to those that grow their own food.

Lots of people are attempting to have this same debate with the Monsantos of the world, which help to feed the Cargills of the world and we all know how that is turning out at this moment in time. But this doesn't have to be the case.
There have been quite a few trends that have come and gone in livestock feed, feeding beef bi-products to cows and feather meal to chickens for example...

GMO SOY 1

GMO SOY 2

GMO SOY 3

GMO SOY 4

GMO SOY 5

I hope to encourage everyone that actually does intend to purchase chicks from a hatchery this year, regardless if they've had no problems in the past to call their hatchery and request that they refrain from using round up ready soy in their breeding stock maintenance ration. They all have the choice to have their grain mills that produce feed for them be more circumspect about their use. It's not as if the feed mills have not heard about problems associated with it. They are in the business of feeding healthy livestock and trust me, there's plenty of urgent discussion going on about it at just about every feed mill working with this size of the market. The largest corporations that provide eggs and chickens for national supermarkets have their own feed mills and their own hatcheries. They aren't dealing with the family owned grain mills that make their living off of feeding breeder stock of hatcheries. They only desire to contribute to the health and well being of the hatcheries breeding stock- the hatcheries root stock the hatcheries genetic diversity.
They need to stay in business. Their local communities need to stay in business and this extends logically to the hatcheries themselves. Regardless, when the family owned mill is convinced by livestock feed and commodity journals that this brand spanking new GMO soy is the best bang for the buck- and the community farms contracted to maintain breeding stock and hatch for the hatcheries themselves fail to take note of the warning signs they end up contributing to the poor overall health of that stock.
The community farms aren't all that concerned with the commodity journals or livestock feed trends. They are keeping tens of thousands of chickens in closed buildings that meet certain strict state government requirements and are culling heavily every time some of the breed stock looks poorly. That breed stock came from some of these farms and individuals that those of you that bypass hatcheries altogether purchase your eggs and chicks from. Chicks don't just grow on trees in a factory. Someone has to provide the rootstock.

Last year hurricanes and tornadoes touched down over much of the USA and many of us experienced cancelled orders from smaller hatcheries destroyed in the weather.
Some of us lost our own stock in the storms and were desperate to replace that stock. When that stock is no longer available because so and so has health problems and liquidated their stock to a hatchery or just got out of birds altogether for financial reasons or whatever, more often than not, a big hole is left for the health and genetic diversity of the breed that long time poultier has laboured over for so many generations.

When an entity is contracted to breed tens of thousands of chickens for a hatchery they don't come at it from the same place of that old time poultier. They come at it from a probably more pragmatic place. They'll meet the laws and requirements head on. They'll keep the birds alive but intellectual curiosity, from my experience dealing with these farms, is limited. The world view is such that seeing these animals as precious treasures is just not possible. These are commodities with all the intrinsic worth as ears of corn.
If birds are gorging on feathers- and many won't because they're debeaked, that's not really much of a concern because all these hens and roosters are going to be turned into chicken meal for pet food manufactures come fall anyway. When birds lose weight and have difficulty standing up they are picked up and thrown into a wood chipper. It's that simple.

When these community farms go to pick up their feed their going to pinch the pennies as close to their waste as humanly possible. The profit margin grows with the use of these GMO commodities and the fact that demand is growing exponentially. Their communities are striving, as they should, they are making an honest wage, as they should. We cannot fault them for anything. But when the consumer informs the hatchery that they will not tolerate the use of soy ( and let's face the facts folks- 99% of all soy produced is GMO at this point- that's a fact.) they will be obliged to make arrangements with their contracted farms to not include it in their breeding ration. These community farms are going to comply and actually gain from learning why it is that these late breaking soy products are not ethical to use- people should not be experimented on and I have a hard time believing anyone wants their hatchery chicks experimented on either.

Have you ever had a beloved pet die of cancer? Have you later learned that the use of specific vaccinations have been linked to these cancers? Have you found yourself beyond mortified that the tumours and ulcers that pet developed began at the vaccination site- or the health issues of the pet followed what was being said about potential problems with these vaccinations? Have you noticed how quickly the large pharmaceutical corporations that create these vaccinations make that news story /movement go away with self-generated reports that disprove the "theory" ? Those theories come about through consensus of nationwide veterinarians mind you.
Disclaimer- family is a major share holder in Novartis...I don't think all pharmaceutical companies are inherently evil - far from it.
Changes will be made to those vaccines, even though the companies often denied there was ever a problem. They don't want your pet to get cancer and they don't want the liability nor inflict damage to their stock rate.

So- do chickens even develop cancer? Who cares right? You'll just replace that hen that died slowly with new chicks next year -right? If you eat eggs every single day produced by chickens fed a generous ration of a soybean that makes its own insecticide and that insecticide continues to replicate itself inside the body of the bird- are you in the least concerned that one of your children may develop thyroid conditions or increase the potential for cancer? That's a digression into your own feeding protocol but it speaks to what is being fed -more and more often to breeding stock of heirloom strains- yes- there are heirloom strains sold through hatcheries by the thousands - they are heirlooms because some hard core poultier created those strains over countless generations before the first founder flock was sold to a hatchery. And selling their breed stock to hatcheries every year is a huge part of their own income. Let's not squander the fruits of the poultier by substituting the health and well being of the breed stock for profit. And let's not enable unethical farming of breed stock. We do have a voice and we should use. If you disagree and want the hatchery to use GMO go ahead and tell your hatchery that.

When I learned about this new family of soy recently I was left breathless. The old family of genetically modified soy was already bad news. This new improved version is even more of a risk that I just can't abide by. It's not soy I'm against. I love edamame and miso and tofu. My trips to Japan are rife with all the above and I'm in heaven. When I get home, I still keep these soy products on hand. I buy them when I go for sushi night in the city and chow on them out of the fridge. So please get that out of your head. Soy is awesome.
But the product that's going into livestock feed rations isn't something that's had enough time or empirical studies to deserve inclusion in our food chain.

 

[kathyinmo]

 

[TastesLikeChkn]

Thank you, that is a great post.

 

[HHandbasket]

Me too! I buy from feed stores in town.

I'm sure every place is different, but I have yet to walk into a feed store that DOESN'T get their chicks from a major hatchery. That doesn't mean the feed stores in your area don't have heritage stock... it's just unheard of where I live. Bradshaw Feed, which Linda and I both love so much, gets their birds from a hatchery (I think it's Murray McMurray, but it might be Meyer... it's one of the ones that starts with an M). I've never had a chicken from there that developed any issues. Ever.

My white faced black Spanish flock came from Ideal last summer. Two of the roosters and 4 of the pullets are definitely show quality, and these are very healthy birds. One arrived with a crossed beak & her flockmates plucked out one of her eyes when she was about 4 days old. She is now 7 months old, laying eggs, with one eye and a crossed beak (and will not be part of my breeding project LOL). She's loud and funny and has the BEST personality of the whole flock. I ordered 25 birds--received 26, but one was DOA. Out of 25 birds received, she is the only one that had a problem. We lost 9 of the birds last summer over a period of about 3 weeks & we couldn't figure out what was going on. Turned out, the unmarked bags of feed we were getting at the local feed store were LAYER PELLETS, not grower-finisher as we had requested for our then 12-week-old chicks, and they were dropping like flies from kidney failure, one every few days. Once we got them on the right feed, we never lost another bird. We also are extra careful now when we buy feed at that store.

 

[idahodebra]

Do you happen to know the name of the new soy? I'd like to look it up.