Do you add stuff into your commercially available food?

[Perris]

yes, I mean flax seeds or hemp seeds, or a mix of the 2, but not more than 0.3 kg of either one, the other, or both together.

The mill doesn't have always the same blend, but they all have similar nutritional values. But it's usually
maize, wheat, pea, sorghum, green rice, fava bean, vetch. Not sure about the english name for other local seeds.
They have the 2 blends in the pics below, if you can recognize the seeds:

View attachment 4175770

thanks; similar to some of the blends available here. Do your birds eat the maple peas? mine dislike them so I usually get blends without. I would like to find one with chicory but haven't yet.

 

[RollinWithTheStones]

thanks; similar to some of the blends available here. Do your birds eat the maple peas? mine dislike them so I usually get blends without. I would like to find one with chicory but haven't yet.

Would you be able to harvest your own chicory or order seeds?

 

[FrostRanger]

this 2006 PhD by K. Horsted, awarded by the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Denmark, shows that this trope is a myth, actually

https://orgprints.org/id/eprint/10463/1/10463.pdf

This doesn't have much to do with what I said though? I'm speaking of mixing in stuff to commercial feed, not about what they can find while freeranging. Free ranging is certainly good but mixing in stuff directly to commercial feed without knowing exactly what you're doing is likely to throw the amount nutrients they are getting out of balance

 

[Perris]

This doesn't have much to do with what I said though? I'm speaking of mixing in stuff to commercial feed, not about what they can find while freeranging. Free ranging is certainly good but mixing in stuff directly to commercial feed without knowing exactly what you're doing is likely to throw the amount nutrients they are getting out of balance

If you actually looked at it you would see that the experiments involved 50% of the birds on a so-called complete ration and 50% on just wheat and oyster shell to supplement what they got by foraging.

"In this study, experimental work has been done concerning productivity and welfare in a forage-based system (Papers 1 and 4), egg quality (Paper 1), estimating feed intake from forage (Papers 1 and 3) and estimating selectivity of feed from forage (Papers 2, 3, and 4). These subjects were investigated in relation to different forage crops and two types of supplementary feed (a complete layer ration versus whole wheat and oyster shells). Three experimental setups were carried out in this study. In 2004, two short-term experiments (23 days each), each with 12 flocks with 20 hens and one cock in each flock, were carried out. The forage crops consisted of grass/clover versus a mixture of forbs in Experiment 1, and grass/clover versus chicory in Experiment 2. In 2005, a third experiment (130 days), with six flocks with 26 hens and one cock, were conducted. The flocks were moved regularly between grass/clover, pea/vetch/oats, lupin and quinoa. In Chapters 3 to 6, the results of the above papers are discussed against other relevant literature."

 

[Altairsky]

thanks; similar to some of the blends available here. Do your birds eat the maple peas? mine dislike them so I usually get blends without. I would like to find one with chicory but haven't yet.

They eat maple seeds with no issues, but they don't go crazy for those black fava beans. But when the rooster started to eat them, all the hens started to eat them too.

 

[Perris]

Would you be able to harvest your own chicory or order seeds?

I have no intention of growing crops - I have a garden, not a small holding or farm. I could order seeds to grow but I want the agricultural chicory (blue-flowered forage plant) not the salad vegetable, and small quantities are typically available for the latter type only. So I am on the look-out for a whole grain/seed/pseudo-cereal mix that includes chicory.

 

[Altairsky]

I would never mix commercial feed with a seed mix. Better leave the 2 things separated in 2 different feeders, the chickens will self regulate and eat whatever they feel like eating.
When both options are available, the chickens will eat from both feeders. They don't fill themselves with scratch.
Chickens will go crazy for seeds if you give them as a treat, they quickly lose interest in scratch when they know that both the seeds and the commercial feed are equally available.
But the commercial feed needs to be of a decent quality. If it tastes like garbage, they won't touch it and will only feed on seeds.
Mine hates layer feed and won't touch it, but they could do anything to steal the chickstarter from the chicks. So I just let them have it if they want it so badly.

 

[FrostRanger]

If you actually looked at it you would see that the experiments involved 50% of the birds on a so-called complete ration and 50% on just wheat and oyster shell to supplement what they got by foraging.

"In this study, experimental work has been done concerning productivity and welfare in a forage-based system (Papers 1 and 4), egg quality (Paper 1), estimating feed intake from forage (Papers 1 and 3) and estimating selectivity of feed from forage (Papers 2, 3, and 4). These subjects were investigated in relation to different forage crops and two types of supplementary feed (a complete layer ration versus whole wheat and oyster shells). Three experimental setups were carried out in this study. In 2004, two short-term experiments (23 days each), each with 12 flocks with 20 hens and one cock in each flock, were carried out. The forage crops consisted of grass/clover versus a mixture of forbs in Experiment 1, and grass/clover versus chicory in Experiment 2. In 2005, a third experiment (130 days), with six flocks with 26 hens and one cock, were conducted. The flocks were moved regularly between grass/clover, pea/vetch/oats, lupin and quinoa. In Chapters 3 to 6, the results of the above papers are discussed against other relevant literature."

That still doesn't tell me much, what was the nutrition profile of the feed? In any case free ranging can certainly reduce the impact of bad feed but the effects of messing with a significant portion of their diet when they don't have access to a large area to free range will be a lot more obvious

 

[Altairsky]

I have no intention of growing crops - I have a garden, not a small holding or farm. I could order seeds to grow but I want the agricultural chicory (blue-flowered forage plant) not the salad vegetable, and small quantities are typically available for the latter type only. So I am on the look-out for a whole grain/seed/pseudo-cereal mix that includes chicory.

If you have the setup for it, you could try to buy or harvest wild chicory seeds and plant them in the pasture. I basically built my pasture by harvesting seeds from wild herbs and just throwing them around my property.

 

[Perris]

But the commercial feed needs to be of a decent quality. If it tastes like garbage, they won't touch it and will only feed on seeds.

Palatability is an important issue. Some seeds have a bitter or soapy taste from phytonutrients or saponins, for example. Fermenting transforms them from unpalatable to palatable by pulling out those compounds. Meanwhile thorough rinsing before serving of anything that generates a lot of bubbles during fermentation (indicating heavy saponin presence) makes that palatable too.

Seeds are designed by plants to survive being eaten, so that they can generate a new plant. They are often equipped with chemical defences to put would-be consumers off or defeat their digestive tracts to emerge intact at the other end, where they are planted complete with fertilizer when the animal poops them out. But fermenting and rinsing removes a lot of those (so-called 'anti-nutritional', better, anti-digestive, compounds) and then the birds will eat them with gusto.