Must be nice. Here hard red wheat iis a little more than the $31 bag of Triple Duty (sort of like all flock). Whole corn is a little less ($28).Hi Bob @RedHillChicken
A sack of wheat is about half the price of a sack of processed chicken feed here BTW.
I wonder what Triple Duty is made of then...
It doesn't say but probably mostly corn, wheat, soy and the micros. It's only 15% protein and it's the only all-flock type of feed they sell near me. So, I usually fortify it by mixing in some fish meal, 30% protein game bird starter ($38/40 lb), or a whole egg to bring it up to 18% protein.
Are you happy not knowing what you're actually feeding them as your main feed?
The mercury from ocean products is not usually a problem because selenium protects against the effects of the mercury as long as there are more moles of selenium than moles of mercury. (Lol, high school chemistry used in real life!).
The mercury does tie up the selenium, though. You might consider offering trace mineral salt.
I know they plug current commodity prices into their software and the progeam spits out a least-cost forumlation that conforms to the specifications on the label..... just like they all do. The label specs conform to the current state-of-the-art for what a chicken needs. That's good enough for me and the birds are in good health. The manufacturer (some sort of subsidary of Land-O-Lakes and Purina) has a lot more to loose from producing an inferior product than I have to loose with my meager flock. If you trust capitalism and the system it will take care of you.
Er, hardly. A better descriptor would be 'conforms to the minimum nutrients required to keep the bird alive at least cost'. I don't know what age they test it to for all flock type feeds. They lose interest after 18 months for layers as that's when commercial producers throw their layers away. The nutrient figures for broilers are based on experiments done on birds up to 3 weeks (yes, 3 weeks) old; body maintenance beyond that is not an issue in those calculations because the bird will be harvested at 5-6 weeks old for KFC or suchlike and all they're interested in for the 'finishing' stage is weight gain.
