I may be growing my own food for the chickens after all, due to genetic editing

[saysfaa]

Too much rounding, not enough significant digits. We know Met recommends to be (depending on source, and excluding the very young and "meaties") to be between .3% and .4% of total feed composition. That's what, 3-4 mg/g? If 1/4lb is 113.4 g, your target is 400mg. of Met (.35%) per quarter pound of feed.

Thank you.

I wasn't sure if 0.3 to 0.4 mg per gram was total feed or just the protein portion.

I think much better in the morning; I'll try again then. I don't follow where the 400 mg came from. I don't follow what I did either, this late in the day.

I think one of the problems is I didn't label things very well. I got (the probably wrong) answer of 114 milligrams of Met in the food a hen can be expected to eat in a day (a hen can be expected to eat about a quarter of a pound per day

There are 453592.37 mg in a pound.

I should wait until morning but here it goes...
Divide 453593 by 4 to get 113,398 mg in a quarter of a pound. Round to 113,400

0.1 percent of 113,398 is 113.4 mg. Oh.

Oh, now I can see what you were saying. Sorry, it wasn't doubting. It is just that it won't stick if I can't fit it into how I can see it.

At least I now have confidence that 400mg is the correct number. With the range and over time and adjusted for individual bird and what else influence how much is needed...

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I don't do math like normal people. Most of the time, I can't even explain how the answer popped into my head. Glad you were able to work it out for yourself.

 

[saysfaa]

I left the selenium issue for a few months and came back to it with fresh eyes.

This time, I notice a lot of "not much is known" about the details of selenium in soil and how it moves through the ecosystem (especially soil and plants). This seems to be because it is difficult and expensive to study it in the field because the amounts are too small to show up on easier/cheaper tests for it.

Last time I looked, I didn't find info about selenium accumulating plants in low to moderate soil levels.
This article talks about it a little:

"..,Secondary accumulators such as cereals, some plants of the cruciferous family (rape, broccoli) and Allium species such as garlic and onion grow in soils with variable Se content and can accumulate 30 to 1000 mg kg−1. Non-accumulating plants generally grown on “selenium-poor” soils and cannot accumulate high concentrations of Se in their tissues and contain less than 30 mg kg−1. This is the case for most plants used for food and feed (forage, vegetables, fruits, etc.) [30].. ."

I will look into growing cereals, rape, broccoli, onions, and garlic to feed the soil where I grow some chicken feed (plants for the chickens or plants for the animals to feed the chickens).

Since Se accumulates at the root and shoot level, I can probably use the crop in the meantime.

Getting the other nutrients in balance is still very important to being able to effectively use the Se that is available. In the plants and animals. I'll come back to that eventually.

 

[saysfaa]

Orffa sells organic selenium, so I'm not done with this. But it is somewhat in line with what I've found for cattle - when the numbers indicate full supplementation, the actual percentage protected from Se deficiency went from 40% to to only 60%... for similar reasons.

https://orffa.com/publications/role-of-organic-selenium-in-poultry-feed/
says, "In natural feed ingredients like grains, soya & oilseeds, selenium is available in the form of selenomethionine (around 50% of the total available Se)...SeMet naturally available in the feed ingredients is advantageous over the traditional selenite...has higher bioavailability and antioxidant properties compared to inorganic selenium.
...
Organic Selenium increases the transfer of Se to the muscles and also building up reserves in the body which have a positive impact on the immunity, gut health, meat quality and protects against stressors
...
[inorganic] Sodium selenite in feed interacts with other nutrients such as ascorbic acid and is reduced to the elemental form which is biologically unavailable in the digestive tract. If selenite is dispersed in feeds with high water activity it is converted to the seleniferous acid (volatile form) and can be lost as a vapor. Pro-oxidant effects of selenite possess detrimental effects on the gut and vacuolar degeneration of epithelial cells in the crypts of the duodenum, mononuclear infiltration in the ileum (Atria et al., 2010). Sodium selenite is hardly transferred to an egg resulting in the limited antioxidant defense against oxidative stress for a growing embryo (Surai, 2006). It cannot be stored in the body as a reserve to combat the stress and most of the selenium consumed is simply excreted.
..."

 

[Perris]

Orffa sells organic selenium, so I'm not done with this. But it is somewhat in line with what I've found for cattle - when the numbers indicate full supplementation, the actual percentage protected from Se deficiency went from 40% to to only 60%... for similar reasons.

https://orffa.com/publications/role-of-organic-selenium-in-poultry-feed/
says, "In natural feed ingredients like grains, soya & oilseeds, selenium is available in the form of selenomethionine (around 50% of the total available Se)...SeMet naturally available in the feed ingredients is advantageous over the traditional selenite...has higher bioavailability and antioxidant properties compared to inorganic selenium.
...
Organic Selenium increases the transfer of Se to the muscles and also building up reserves in the body which have a positive impact on the immunity, gut health, meat quality and protects against stressors
...
[inorganic] Sodium selenite in feed interacts with other nutrients such as ascorbic acid and is reduced to the elemental form which is biologically unavailable in the digestive tract. If selenite is dispersed in feeds with high water activity it is converted to the seleniferous acid (volatile form) and can be lost as a vapor. Pro-oxidant effects of selenite possess detrimental effects on the gut and vacuolar degeneration of epithelial cells in the crypts of the duodenum, mononuclear infiltration in the ileum (Atria et al., 2010). Sodium selenite is hardly transferred to an egg resulting in the limited antioxidant defense against oxidative stress for a growing embryo (Surai, 2006). It cannot be stored in the body as a reserve to combat the stress and most of the selenium consumed is simply excreted.
..."

Many of these issues are created by trying to get all nutrients into a heat- and pressure-treated homogenous pellet. That's a problem for pellet makers, but I do not understand why you are tying yourself up in knots by following commercial feed producers' agendas and demands, when your aim is to grow your own; you do not intend to micronize and extrude your crops into pellets do you?

Fermentation bacteria can accumulate any selenium in grains you ferment, and make it available to your chickens. Remember also the message of the chick free choice feeding paper you found and kindly shared with us.

 

[saysfaa]

I don't feel knotted, sorting it out is fun as long as it is done pieces at a time.

I don't intend to pelletize. The cattle weren't fed pellets so I don't think it is a pellet issue. Among other reasons for not thinking so.

.. Fermentation bacteria can accumulate any selenium in grains you ferment, and make it available to your chickens....

Grains already have the form of Se that chickens can use - if the ground they are grown in has the Se. If the ground doesn't have it, it isn't there for the chickens or the bacteria.

Yes, I do remember the chicks balanced their diet very effectively. I'm thinking that will cover a llot of the unknowns from not being able to test and from not knowing all the pieces. They had all the ingredients needed to do it, though. And in forms that let them get everything needed without getting too much of one thing in order to get enough of something else. At least as well as the commercial feed - not necessarily what is actually the best possible diet.

The last part probably won't be an issue for me during the summer. It is likely to be during the winter. We get a long, cold, snowy winter. They will be quite dependent on what I choose to harvest and store for them.

 

[Perris]

If the ground doesn't have it, it isn't there for the chickens or the bacteria.

I thought Se in your ground was deficient, not completely absent. In any case it would apply to any supplement you provide instead.

If you enjoy doing these calculations that's wonderful, but I fear you are following red herrings. Besides the point about pelleting, which I think you miss, do you know that a lot of the lab results that produced your target ratios were obtained through the use of chickens that had their caeca removed, and that there are "approximately 10 to the power 11 (can't do superscript here) bacteria per gram" in a chicken's caeca, and that it has a huge role in digestion? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003257912100609X?via=ihub

Did people keep chickens in your area before, say, 1940? If so, what do you think they ate?

 

[Perris]

You might want to note that the journal Poultry Science is open access (at least for now) so you can browse it to your heart's content for up to date thinking on these matters. Follow the link in the last post and then select the journal title for all volumes and issues.

 

[saysfaa]

I meant lab testing of the feed, not the chickens.

Yes, people kept chickens here before 1940s. And cattle. I remember the advent of Se as a necessary nutrient instead of only as a toxin. The differences between not enough and enough are real but they are not all or nothing. More cows stayed open longer, but some became pregnant. More calves were slipped early but some maintained pregnancy long enough. More cows didn't clean (meaning the placenta was expelled) without vet help.

The effects in chickens are parallel (less fertile hens, less fertile roosters, more chicks dead in the eggs, ect) but we didn't keep chickens so I don't know about that first hand.

I'm not raising chicks. So why does it matter? Because of all the other things Se does that are much more difficult to see are related to Se levels.

Selenium is at least as important for its immune system roles and antioxidant roles and such.

Similar to iodine. That is deficient here too. That was supplemented earlier - the 1940s, I think. People lived here before that, too. They just didn't live as long or as well and many more of them had goiters. I still remember people with goiters bigger than a softball (70 cm - I don't know how common softball is over there.) No exaggeration.

I agree the research has weaknesses; I don't doubt some are because of things like pelleting and limilted and different aims of the industries.

I think you throw the baby out with the bath water on this.

 

[Perris]

Fair enough. I'll sign off and leave you to it.