Growing Edamame (soy) and peas for SHTF chicken feed

[Zeoliter]

I have formulated a semi-decent recipe based on what grows well here and the land I have available. My recipe is:

24% brown rice
24% winter wheat
24% peas
24% edamame (soybean)
3% dried seaweed
1% oyster shell

Works out to be 20% protein and 5.8% fat (a little high). The calculator I used doesn't have any fiber values.

Please note this is my doomsday feed. I won't be feeding this to my birds unless the lights go out. I have a question on the peas and soybeans though. Can I let them go to seed before harvesting?

I let many of my peas go to seed this year as I wanted the seed for next year. They are basically dried hard peas. I could easily put them through my grinder. And they would last a long time. Can anyone see an issue with this? Any loss in nutritional content?

The soybeans need to be processed and the easiest way to do that (without a commercial roaster) is to just boil them. Can I let soybeans go to seed (for storage) and then boil them and dry them in an oven when making a batch of feed? Or do I need to harvest when ripe, boil, and then oven-dry?

I tried to incorporate corn into the recipe but the fat values just seemed too high. I started off at 48% rice as U_Stormcrow mentioned in a thread I posted a month ago but peas are easy to grow and boost protein from 16.5% to 19% and reduces fat content a little

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I have formulated a semi-decent recipe based on what grows well here and the land I have available. My recipe is:

24% brown rice
24% winter wheat
24% peas
24% edamame (soybean)
3% dried seaweed
1% oyster shell

Works out to be 20% protein and 5.8% fat (a little high). The calculator I used doesn't have any fiber values.

Please note this is my doomsday feed. I won't be feeding this to my birds unless the lights go out. I have a question on the peas and soybeans though. Can I let them go to seed before harvesting?

I let many of my peas go to seed this year as I wanted the seed for next year. They are basically dried hard peas. I could easily put them through my grinder. And they would last a long time. Can anyone see an issue with this? Any loss in nutritional content?

The soybeans need to be processed and the easiest way to do that (without a commercial roaster) is to just boil them. Can I let soybeans go to seed (for storage) and then boil them and dry them in an oven when making a batch of feed? Or do I need to harvest when ripe, boil, and then oven-dry?

I tried to incorporate corn into the recipe but the fat values just seemed too high. I started off at 48% rice as U_Stormcrow mentioned in a thread I posted a month ago but peas are easy to grow and boost protein from 16.5% to 19% and reduces fat content a little

You can let them go to seed. The legumes/pulses (soybean and peas) both need heat treatment. Steaming or boiling is fine. Assuming you remove the hulls, your fiber content should be between 3.5 and 4.0 based on averages. And yes, you can let them go to seed - your mix is high enough (again, based on averages) in the main targets that any nutritional losses as the plant moves into reproductive mode shouldn't put your mix into the "likely deficcient" column.

You should be aware of potential constraints in using that much peas. From Feedipedia.org :

Potential constraints

Antitryptic activity​

Trypsin inhibitors are the main antinutritional factor in peas, although peas are one of the grain legumes with the least trypsin inhibitor content, usually lower than 2% of the protein content (raw soybeans contain 8 times this amount). There are large varietal differences in antitryptic factors. The trypsin inhibiting activity of 33 European spring pea varieties ranged from 1.69 to 7.56 trypsin inhibiting units (TIU), while the level in winter peas was 7.34-11.24 TIU (Leterme et al., 1998). Smooth peas contain more trypsin inhibitors than wrinkled peas (Leterme et al., 1989; Perrot, 1995).
Trypsin inhibitors bind with trypsin in the small intestine, preventing protein digestion. They also induce pancreatic enlargement and increase protein secretion, causing lower N retention, lower growth and lower feed efficiency in monogastric species, including pre-ruminant animals (Perrot, 1995; Rackis et al., 1986). In ruminants, trypsin inhibitors are degraded in the rumen and are not a concern (Fuller, 2004).

Tannins​

Tannins are known to reduce protein digestibility in monogastrics because they bind with protein prior to their digestion. Tannin content is related to the seed color, grains with dark seed coats containing more tannins (Myer et al., 2001). Tannin content is also much lower in white flowered peas than in coloured flowered peas (Grosjean et al., 1986; Canbolat et al., 2007; Prolea, 2008).

Lectins​

Lectins are proteins able to bind glycoproteins and carbohydrates. They act in the small intestine by interfering in the absorption of the end-products of digestion by binding and disrupting the epithelial cells (Dixon et al., 1992). They represent about 2.5% of pea protein (Perrot, 1995).
Improving the nutritive value of peas by decreasing trypsin inhibitors and tannins is the goal of many breeding programs (Gatel, 1995). Modern cultivars of "protein peas" are tannin-free and have low concentrations of trypsin inhibitors, which makes them particularly suitable for animal feeding, even in the unprocessed form for monogastrics (Mihailovic et al., 2005).

So do your best to choose wrinkled, white-flowered peas as light in seed color as available to you, or seek out one of the new varieties of tannin-free tia reduced cultivars.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

and you will want to search for more studies like this to help you make your selections, assuming a variety of options is available to you.

 

[Zeoliter]

We don't have a large selection of peas over here. I think I'll reduce the peas to 10 or 15% and boost the rice and wheat.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

See what you do have available, then check those first. If you only have 4 or 6 cultivars to look up, its not that much effort - but yes, I'd be inclined to drop total pea content regardless.

 

[Penpal]

Sunflowers are easy to grow. BOSS (black oil sunflower seeds) have the highest fat content and are a good addition in the winter (if your winters are harsh). Mammoth are also good, but not as high in fat and would be good year round.

Soy is a phytoestrogen. This is why it is fed to dairy cows, to boost their milk quantity. I would either omit the soy, or put it at less than 5%. Or, feed the pods when the beans are just tiny little things.

You could add corn in the winter for extra calories, use an old corn, like Hopi Blue.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Sunflowers are easy to grow. BOSS (black oil sunflower seeds) have the highest fat content and are a good addition in the winter (if your winters are harsh). Mammoth are also good, but not as high in fat and would be good year round.

Soy is a phytoestrogen. This is why it is fed to dairy cows, to boost their milk quantity. I would either omit the soy, or put it at less than 5%. Or, feed the pods when the beans are just tiny little things.

You could add corn in the winter for extra calories, use an old corn, like Hopi Blue.

You know what else is high in phytoestrogens? Beans, chickpeas, etc. Flax Seed. Clover. Alfalfa. Broccoli, Cauliflower, Spinach, Cabbage. Many Fruits and Nuts. Grains.

"Scary word bad" isn't science.

High fat content DOES cause fatty liver hemorrhagic disease and a host of other afflictions in poultry, most of which contribute to an early death.

The Original Poster lives in Japan, and has built a feed recipe based on locally available food stuffs, including some they already grow in their fields, which hits desired ranges of protein, individual amino acids, moderate fat content, and moderate fiber contents.

I have to recommend against your suggestions above, its clear they were based on personal preferences, not an effort at understanding either the original poster's needs or the nutritional impact of your proposed changes.

You know what else has moderately high levels of phytoestrogens? Sunflower Seeds.

 

[Magnumchicken]

Why would soybeans need heat treatment? None of the billions of chickens in commercial operations are fed heat treated soybeans, not are almost all of our chickens fed on commercial feed.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Why would soybeans need heat treatment? None of the billions of chickens in commercial operations are fed heat treated soybeans, not are almost all of our chickens fed on commercial feed.

Just because its not mentioned on the bag doesn't mean it hasn't been done. All legumes, including soy, contain chemicals with anti-nutritional factors. Heat treatment helps to neutralize the trypsin inhibitors and lectins in soy, making the soy more digestible, and helping it to limit its ability to inhibit the absortion of nutrition offered by other components of the feed.

Most chickens fed soy are actually fed soy meal, which is HEAVILY processed, a by product of soy oil extraction, and again involves heat.

When planning for SHTF, offering a feed whose value is much less than it could be, instead of taking the relatively simple steps to heat treat (or deal with anti-nutritive properties in other ways - soaking and fermentation both have limited places in improving bioavailability in some feeds and reducing concerns in others) - can only be justified if the costs of doing the thing outweigh the gains. Here, I don't beleive that's the case.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

This is from Feedipedia.

Soybean meal is the major and preferred source of protein for all types of poultry, due to the amount and quality of its protein and amino acids. A diet based on maize and soybean meal provides a good balance of all essential amino-acids except methionine, but this problem can be solved by the inclusion of synthetic methionine (Waldroup et al., 2008). Soybean meal inclusion levels range from 25% in chicks to 30-40% in broilers, breeders and laying hens (Willis, 2003; McDonald et al., 2002; Ewing, 1997).

Pre-extraction treatments have shown to be effective in improving soybean meal nutritive value.

Dehulling​

It was shown that the dehulling of soy beans prior to making conventional soybean meal had positive effects on layers who produced significantly bigger eggs with stronger eggshell when they were fed on dehulled soybean meal (Park et al., 2002). Broilers fed on dehulled soybean meal also linearly increased their body weight gain with the provision of soybean meal in their diet and their gain per feed ratio was higher (Park et al., 2002).

Recently, it was shown that dehulling soybeans prior to Extrusion-Pressing or prior to Flaking-Cooking-Pressing had no effect on starter broilers (1-14d) and growing broilers (14-28d) for feed intake (FI), average daily gain (ADG) and the feed: gain ratio (FCR) (Royer et al., 2020). Dehulling had only significant advantage on carcass yield, possibly resulting from adaptive growth of gizzard and proventriculus (Royer et al., 2020).

Heat treatments​

Heating soybeans prior to oil extraction or heating soybean meal is very important as heat can destroy heat labile antinutritional factors present in soybean seeds. Heat has also some effects on protein solubility of soybean meal, which is important for its nutritive value. It has been demonstrated that autoclaving raw hexane-extracted soybeans or soybean meal increased the growth of broilers fed on this raw material by 140 to 150% (Dozier et al., 2011). Cooking, autoclaving and microwaving were referred to as the most successful heat procedures that may have an important role in removing ANFs in peas (Habiba, 2002). In soybean, heat procedures like extrusion, cooking, toasting and roasting have been reported to be efficient in reducing trypsin inhibitor activity (TIA) and phytic acid (PA) in soybeans (Ari et al., 2012).

In broiler chicken, feeding heat-processed soybean meal yielded higher final body weight and higher BWG and the broilers had lower feed: gain ratio compared with broiler fed on raw soybean meal. However, no differences were found among heating procedures (autoclaving, roasting and microwaving) on growth performance of animals for the starter, grower and finisher periods (Tousi-Mojarrad et al., 2014).

On the contrary, overheating has deleterious effect on soybean meal nutritive value and it has been recommended not to overheat soybean meal.

Nevertheless, the method, and the combination of time and temperature need to be optimized since under-heating results in poor destruction of ANFs while over-heating causes unavailability of some amino acids. It has been suggested that the digestibility and availability of essential amino acids are increased when autoclaving occurs at 121°C further than 20 min, causing higher growth performance of broiler chickens thaks to higher destruction of ANFs by the heat treatment, while the excessive hot processing when SBM was autoclaved at 121°C for 40 min decreased digestibility and availability of lysine and cystine (Parsons et al., 1991) and resulted in lower growth performanceof broiler chickens (Tousi-Mojarrad et al., 2014: Anderson-Hafermann et al., 1992). An other study suggested that over-heating occurred beoyond 10 minutes of autoclaving: subsequently soybean meal nutritive value was impaired (Araba et al., 1990).

In the USA, approximately 66% of protein in broiler feeds comes from soybean meal (Dozier et al., 2011). The reference soybean meal used in poultry feeding in the world is the solvent-extracted soybean meal.

However, the recent development of organic poultry production led to alternative processes like extrusion-pression (expelling) and more energetic soybean meal.

Extrusion can be done at different temperatures and it was shown that at the lowest temperatures (121 and 135°C) the resulting soybean meal could be considered underprocessed, with high urease activity and low amino acid digestibilities in roosters. It was then suggested to extrude soybeans at temperatures higher than 135°C and no over processing was noted at 160°C (Karr-Lilienthal et al., 2006).

Amino acid true digestibilities of expeller-extruded soybean meal were lower than those of solvent-extracted soybean meal referred to in the NRC. However, it was found that broilers fed on such expeller-extruded soybean meal had no difference in growth performance over a 49-day period but chicken had lower breast meat yield (24.95 vs. 26.30%) (Powell et al., 2011). A further experiment reported that CP ileal digestibility and amino acids ileal digestibility of extruded soybean meal was higher that those of solvent extracted soybean meal. Daily weight gains and feed intakes were increased and FCR was improved by the use of extruded soybean meal which was thus considered valuable for poultry feeding (Jahanian et al., 2016).

Other plant protein sources can partially and totally replace soybean meal in poultry rations, such as cottonseed meal, groundnut meal, sunflower meal and palm kernel meal, provided that they are used in combination with lysine supplementation. However, antinutritional factors and other potential issues may limit the use of these alternative protein sources (Elkin, 2002).