Fermented feed for chickens

[BDutch]

If chickens are used to eating X, especially if they have been eating it since chickhood, it takes some time for them to change their tastes, rather like some modern tourists faced with unfamiliar foreign food when on their hols. So Brits abroad notoriously seek out restaurants serving British style food instead of trying the often delicious and usually much healthier local options.

But if you keep offering it in small amounts, the bravest member of the flock will try it, and when the rest see it isn't dangerous, and especially if the brave one comes to obviously like it, they, or most of them, will follow suit. Chickens could not thrive in almost every habitat and food environment in the world, as they do, if they were not suited to eat whatever grows wherever and whatever they are offered by their keepers.

No doubt you are right. Im convinced a fermented grain mix with whole grains is healthier than the grains coming directly from the bag.

But for chickens who can not free range all the time, part of their food needs to be a completed food with all the extra vitamins and proteins, like all flock, layer or chick feed. Chickens who have access to a lush and healthy environment all year through, don’t need much besides what they can find. There is no need to give the breeds who are fit to free range completed food.

My chickens can not free range 24/7. It varies from 0 - 8 hours a day. In summer there are more hours to free range and there is much more to find than during winter. We adapt.

For the time being I’m pleased with the food regime I give them now. Everyone chooses or can do things differently and we all live in a different environments and even the requirements of the chickens can vary. The commercial hybrids who lay an egg almost every day need other feed than the old heritage breeds, old hens or roosters. Therefore there is not one strategy that suits us all.

 

[Perris]

I’m pleased with the food regime I give them now.

I am glad you have found something you and your flock are happy with and thrive on.

Everyone chooses or can do things differently and we all live in a different environments and even the requirements of the chickens can vary. The commercial hybrids who lay an egg almost every day need other feed than the old heritage breeds, old hens or roosters. Therefore there is not one strategy that suits us all.

Indeed. I agree with that. But I do not agree with the following:

for chickens who can not free range all the time, part of their food needs to be a completed food with all the extra vitamins and proteins, like all flock, layer or chick feed.

Vitamins and minerals are called micronutrients because they are needed in minute / tiny quantities. And they exist in real food, if they haven't been destroyed by processing or oxidised in storage. I imagine you do not take daily pills to get your recommended vitamins and minerals, but trust that you are getting the small amounts you need from the plants you eat as fruit, veg, cereal, pseudo-cereal, pulse, nut, seed etc. plus those from animals on those relatively few occasions you eat meat or fish etc. And in real food they exist in the sort of concentration that we and our chickens have evolved to metabolize them, unlike in commercial formulations which are concentrates (the clue is in the name given to animal feeds: 'concentrates'). Some vitamins and minerals are toxic in 'extra' quantities (that's why there are *maxima* as well as minima on the labels for those elements of the feed).

I think that a little free range time or real food treats and leftovers can supply all the micronutrients a chicken needs, in general (and all these sorts of statements are generalizations, on both sides of the argument, of course). I think that's what saves the backyard chickens that mostly eat processed feed, and is why they don't look and live and die like industrial commercial layers.

My chickens can not free range 24/7. It varies from 0 - 8 hours a day. In summer there are more hours to free range and there is much more to find than during winter.

I think that's more than enough for them to find what they need in your lovely garden and environs. Yes there is less in winter but also typically they aren't laying in winter so have fewer demands. And like wild birds they can stock up and store a lot of nutrients when times are good, to see them through the lean times. Wild birds manage. Chickens can too, especially with a caring keeper who is making sure they're getting the macronutrients (carbs, fats, proteins) every day through their supplied food, whatever form that takes.

 

[BDutch]

Indeed. I agree with that. But I do not agree with the following:

BDutch said:
for chickens who can not free range all the time, part of their food needs to be a completed food with all the extra vitamins and proteins, like all flock, layer or chick feed.

Vitamins and minerals are called micronutrients because they are needed in minute / tiny quantities. And they exist in real food, if they haven't been destroyed by processing or oxidised in storage. I imagine you do not take daily pills to get your recommended vitamins and minerals, but trust that you are getting the small amounts you need from the plants you eat as fruit, veg, cereal, pseudo-cereal, pulse, nut, seed etc. plus those from animals on those relatively few occasions you eat meat or fish etc. And in real food they exist in the sort of concentration that we and our chickens have evolved to metabolize them, unlike in commercial formulations which are concentrates (the clue is in the name given to animal feeds: 'concentrates'). Some vitamins and minerals are toxic in 'extra' quantities (that's why there are *maxima* as well as minima on the labels for those elements of the feed).

Yes, again you are right. I should have added or other food which is fresh, healthy and balanced.
This is even better than the cheap commercial feed.

Good additions from your side. Thanks.