Heritage Feeds for Heritage Breeds

[Jake Levi]

They have a choice of tagging with correct labels, or my buying elsewhere, I wont buy food for me on a one size fits all label and I wont do it for my livestock either.

There are ingredients that I doNOT want to feed.

People nowadays forget that chicken diets have changed drastically in the past hundred years, even in the past 40 years, and most of the change is not what is better for the chickens but what is most profitable for the mills. So a bit of caveat emptor comes into play. Just in my lifetime chicken feed has changed from what the farmer raised and fed to what the feed store sold.

My main breed, the Icelandic developed in a country with little or no grains produced, and most of that was used for people, the chickens got scraps if they were lucky, and depended on ranging for the bulk of their food.

When I was a kid helping my grandmother with her flock of RIRs in the 40s she fed mostly cracked corn, some oats and table scraps, those the dogs didnt get. The rest of their diet they ranged for. At butchering time the chickens crowded around to pick up any and all scraps.

So, my ration of ground corn, rolled steamed oats and barley with some wheat, BOSS and minerals is far better then what our breeds developed on, add in some meat or fish meal and it is pushing the better higher priced commercial feeds available.

Its not for everyone, for a number of reasons, but it is for me. Any BYC folks who want to discuss similar for them I am open, for those who dont thats fine too.

 

[Erica]

Just another quick point, feeding whole grain to softfeather hens entirely depends on what their gizzard has been trained to process. Any bird fed a pellet diet will have less effective gizzard musculature than a bird given grain in increasing stages from fully milled to whole. This may partly explain an alleged difference between breed grain-handling abilities (though I haven't read it anywhere other than here, so I'm not entirely convinced yet

).

But in any case there's a very easy way to pre-process grain without a grinder, and that is to sprout it. It doesn't produce miraculous increases in protein (ignore those claims on some of the sillier sites) but it does make the vitamins more available and it does greatly enhance digestibility of whole grain. I feed young birds freshly milled grain (and other feedstuffs to balance the ration) and older birds get the whole sprouted seeds etc.

Legumes (peas, beans) require different approaches depending on size and toxins in the seed.

That's all for me right now Jake, but I'm glad you're doing this and putting it up as info for others (like me) to learn from.

Best wishes,
Erica

 

[Cindy in PA]

Chickens have no problem eating and processing whole grains, but it is best to work them up to whole grains a little at a time.

 

[Clay Mudd]

Quote:
Allow me to pick a nit:

I think even our modern notion of a "ration" is different from the way those breeds originally ate.

As Erica pointed pointed out, in traditional polyculture farms, chickens scratched through cowpies, etc, gobbling up undigested grains, insect larvae, etc. In addition, even the spillage from feeding other critters ending up feeding the chickens. Of course, a lot of people are rediscovering this approach, but it's hard to shake the "sole ration" mentality promoted by the feed companies.

What does that mean for you and me? I don't know!

I have to admit that I'm not so much interested in a "heritage feed" as avoiding the flaws I personally see with commercial food:

GMOs: The jury may still be out on the safeness of GMO, but I'm content to let other people be the experiment.
Soy: I don't want to get started on this one.

Just imagine the standard anti-soy wacko argument here, ok?
Semi-random ingredients: I have no fundamental gripe with by-products and co-products, but I want to know which ones. For instance, I feed my chooks brewer's grains, which I pick up from a local microbrewery.
Freshness: pretty variable with commercial feed, and depending on how far one is from the mill, can range from a bog problem to no problem.

So, in summary: I have nothing useful to add, but want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread.

 

[Erica]

This is going backwards a little, but I just wanted to demonstrate (if I can) why the idea that softfeather breeds have trouble with whole grains might be a myth (particularly when talking about feather quality).

Here are my two boys raised almost entirely on a whole grain diet (that is, after 12 weeks of age; before that the grains were cracked). These whole grains are fed either soaked or sprouted (i.e. various degrees of sprouting), but occasionally I've had to give unsprouted whole grain as well.

Today is very overcast and the pens are dim so the photos aren't great, but they do show healthy feathering. It's a pity the images (blurred because I had to reduce resolution) don't show the gleam very well but I assure you both birds are highly iridescent. The leghorn in particular seems to glow; the ancona sometimes looks like he's been oiled. These birds have never been free ranged due to predation by goshawks, so any problems with a wholegrain diet should be clear by now.

I'm sure there are many better examples of each breed and many better photos. Forgive this little back-step, but the point about wholegrain/softfeather kind of stuck in my head.

cheers all,
Erica

 

[Chris09]

Quote:
I wouldn't call it a, "myth" I have fed the whole grain diet to some of my exhibition Reds and have seen the problems that occurs first hand.
I will also add that Sprouted, Soaked and Soured grains are different than dried whole grains straight from the mill. When you Sprouted, Soaked or Soured grains you are "possessing" the grains as if it was milled.

Chris

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Quote:
Sprouting or soaking is processing, it helps improve the digestibility of the starches and proteins in the grain just as cracking/grinding.

 

[Erica]

I'm glad I'm "possessing" my grains.

I'm not laughing at you Chris, it's an adorable typo. In my endless search for home mix recipe improvements I'm often feeling I'm possessed and not the reverse...

My apologies for not making it clear that sprouting is a form of processing. However I do believe the gizzard of a bird raised to tolerate hard seeds is in good shape to handle them as part of a balanced staple. A bird switched to whole grain from a commercial diet will be far more likely to falter. I'm not sure if Chris's birds were ever on commercial feeds before moving to grains, but if so, [edit: deleted typo] that might be why (on top of possible non-selection for hardiness) the exhibition reds faltered on grain.

Nutrient balance with a wholegrain diet is probably harder to achieve than with a sprouted or milled grain diet, but not impossible. You just have to make sure nutrient density and availability are higher in other elements of the ration.

Erica

 

[Jake Levi]

Good posts, thanks, this is the kind of discussion I was hoping to see going on.

I am a confirmed believer in nutritional density, in forms as well as variety, the free ranging chicken achieves both, and I personally like to give both in a confined chickens diet also, a mixed diet, of whole grains, and ground, steamed, rolled and soft. I also daily feed good green alfalfa chafe to my birds and the clean it up very quickly.

 

[Chris09]

Quote:
Yup it was a typo, "possessing" should have been "processing".

Grains that are either Sprouted, Soaked or Soured the nutrients are more easily digested plus the birds take in more liquids (the liquids that the grain soaked up).
I've feed Soured Oats for some time to American Gamefowl and it is a excellent "treat" on hot day because the birds take in the extra liquid and vitamins.

When we Sour Oats we basically fill a 15 gallon plastic drum about 1/2 to 3/4 full of regular bin oats then added enough "acidified vitamin water" to cover the oats about 3 to 4 inches than we let it soak about a week or so checking it every day and adding more "acidified vitamin water" as needed. By the second week the Sour Oats should stink or smell sour.

The "acidified vitamin water" that we use is a mixture of Apple Cider Vinegar, Vitamin mix and water.


Chris