Feeding a Wholegrain DIY Feed in Kenya

[Kuku_For_Chickens]

Hi All,

British living in Kenya, with a mixed flock of Chickens, Guinea Fowl, Geese, Ducks. At the moment everyone get's a layers mash, and seems to do fairly well on it with the full day free ranging where they get tons of grit and additional vegetables I would say most days.

I would like to move to a Wholegrain DIY effort, so that I actually know what goes into the food. The Layer's feed is OK, but I wouldn't say it produces the best eggs even with the free ranging time etc.

I asked ChatGPT to come up with a Layer's recipe for me, based on the grains etc. that are available to me. It came up with the below.

Corn 35%
Wheat 25%
Peas 12%
Lentils 8%
Pearl Millet or Sorghum 10%
Sunflower Seed or Flax or Sesame 5%
Limestone 4%
Vitamin / Pre Mineral Mix - 1%

With the below nutritional analysis;

Crude Protein 18.0% (min.)
Crude Fat 4.0% (min.)
Crude Fiber ~5% (max.)
Calcium 3.5–4.0%
Phosphorus 0.5–0.6%
Lysine ~0.85%
Methionine + Cystine ~0.6%
Salt (NaCl) 0.3–0.5%

I think the Nutritional Analysis looks quite good.

Certainly interested in your expert views.

Many Thanks

Rowan

 

[Perris]

How much of that will grow in Kenya?
I would think you'd be better off - for freshness and cost - starting with cereals and pseudo-cereals that grow in your locality, and ask the AI just to fill in the gaps. Otherwise you are likely to be offered just stuff widely available in the USA or otherwise tops the popularity stakes used by the algorithm.

 

[Kuku_For_Chickens]

How much of that will grow in Kenya?
I would think you'd be better off - for freshness and cost - starting with cereals and pseudo-cereals that grow in your locality, and ask the AI just to fill in the gaps. Otherwise you are likely to be offered just stuff widely available in the USA or otherwise tops the popularity stakes used by the algorithm.

Thank you for the reply!

Luckily I think this is all grown in Kenya, I only suggested to ChatGPT what is available to me here as follows;

Corn, Hard Wheat, Sorghum, Pearl Millet, Sesame Seed, Flax Seed, Sunflower Seed, Peas, Lentils, Amaranth Seed. I'm sure there are more than I can get that I haven't included, but that might be more Millet's for example, or different Sorghums, so would be more direct swaps. Things like Quinoa aren't really grown here, but Amaranth seed is 99.9% the same thing for example.

 

[Perris]

Thank you for the reply!

Luckily I think this is all grown in Kenya, I only suggested to ChatGPT what is available to me here as follows;

Corn, Hard Wheat, Sorghum, Pearl Millet, Sesame Seed, Flax Seed, Sunflower Seed, Peas, Lentils, Amaranth Seed. I'm sure there are more than I can get that I haven't included, but that might be more Millet's for example, or different Sorghums, so would be more direct swaps. Things like Quinoa aren't really grown here, but Amaranth seed is 99.9% the same thing for example.

OK, so your next task is trying to source it, if you haven't already done that. It's handy to have a short table of viable substitutions when you are trying to match what's ideal to what's really an option where you are.