DIY meat bird feed

[PandaGirl]

Hey! I was wondering if anybody mixes there own meat bird feed? I am interested in doing this so they my chickens can be as organic as possible. I am also wondering if you would feed it to them as chicks. I would like to do a non medicated chick feed, but I was reading somewhere that they might die is you do not do this. Thoughts? Thanks!

 

[saysfaa]

I do not mix my own feed because I don't have a way to test the ingredients for protein levels or trace element levels. Or fat or fiber levels, for that matter, but I am less concerned about them because the windows between deficient and toxic are a lot wider than for some of the trace elements.

I think figuring out a recipe is fun. It is just the kind of research and puzzle I like - both which ratios are important and why, and which combinations of sources provide the bare minimum and/or the best possible nutrition.

For example:

"A way of describing a limiting amino acid is using the concept of a rain barrel. The protein is the rain barrel and the amino acids are the individual staves that make up the barrel. When one stave is shorter than the others, the barrel can only be filled to the level of the shortest stave. In other words, when one amino acid is deficient, proteins can only be synthesized to the level of availability of that amino acid." Quote from https://www.asi.k-state.edu/research-and-extension/swine/swinenutritionguide/limitingaminoacids.html

And
tryptophan is the first-limiting amino acid in corn and methionine is the first-limiting amino acid in soybean meal, but lysine is first limiting amino acid in a corn-soybean meal blend.

On the other hand
"Amino acid antagonisms are characterized by the depressed utilization of amino acids which results when a structurally related amino acid is added in excess. Noted relationships include lysine-arginine and leucine-isoleucine- valine.

Almost any amino acid is toxic if added at a high enough concentration. Food intake is depressed and the toxicity is not alleviated by adding other amino acids."

Both paragraphs from https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/82f99460-d2c5-4cf8-9313-e30cb514343c/content

I am unwilling to simply use the published charts of nutrient compositions because those are averaged from a very wide range of growing locations and conditions and varieties. Corn, for example, can vary by 80% for fat and 15% for in lysine, threonine, tryptophan due to variety alone.

The further production is pushed (meat or eggs), the more important nutrition is.

 

[saysfaa]

I also don't want to try to grow the amount and variety of plants needed, especially doing it organically. I can't do it anywhere near as well or efficiently as my neighbors who farm full time on a family farm scale do, much less the really big operations.

And I already have 40 acres of farmland in the midwest, a tractor, implements, and the farming background to do it if I did want to.

If I buy the ingredients, I don't see much difference between buying them individually and buying them already mixed together.

 

[raingarden]

The hang-up is not just the growing. The grain has to be milled, steam cooked and mixed into a mash.

 

[saysfaa]

Medicated chick feed usually means it has Amprolium added. Amprolium is not an antibiotic. It slows the growth of coccidia spores inside the chick so the chick's immune system isn't overwhelmed before it can develop immunity to the coccidia.

If the chicks are vaccinated, the medicated feed has no benefit.

If the chicks are not vaccinated, the medicated feed can literally save their lives. Coccidia is nearly impossibly to get rid of in an environment that has ever had it. It can be countered, to some degree, by keeping the bedding very dry and clean of poops. Not crowding the chicks helps also. So it is not necessarily a death sentence if chicks are neither vaccinated nor fed medicated feed but they are at a much higher risk.

 

[saysfaa]

The hang-up is not just the growing. The grain has to be milled, steam cooked and mixed into a mash.

Yes. And harvested, winnowed, hulled, and maybe even cleaned. I would want it cleaned.

I once bought a sack of hulled rye to grind into flour for baking. I discovered the step I thought would be the easiest, cleaning it, wasn't as easy as I expected or needs equipment or know how I don't have. Some molded, some didn't get noticably cleaner, and I ended up planting most of it as a cover crop in the garden.

Not to be too discouraging - it is interesting and worthwhile to learn how to do these sorts of things. The growing and prepping parts aren't so hard as to be impossible to try if one lived in a country where chick feed wasn't available.