Is it worth the extra $$

[Kiki]

KiKi, thank you for that link, I gotta sign up with them log in and grab a copy. This is the kind of info I like to see, real science with the numbers to hopefully back it up. Once I digest all this, probably be a few days I got a lot of other stuff to do, Ill try to post something in simple terms, This X is what we should be looking for and Y is important because of Z, without all the techie stuff, if it is possible to do so. That report is almost 30 years old it looks like if I read it correctly. Kind of surprised more studies have not been done since then, especially since we understand more about how it all works now, not to mention how important this actually IS, from both a person who cares for their birds aspect, but also from, I have a huge farm and need to keep them alive but maximize my profits aspect too. Remember when margarine was better for us then butter was? Then we learned more, and now where are we?

I say we outlaw cars and cats, let all our Chickens free range and just grab the eggs where we see them

Aaron

I made this from info I grabbed from the book mentioned above.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...dJgnotL5LaJMiiQ7HSXmWgolsBI/edit?usp=drivesdk

 

[Ascholten]

Ok, I did not say a higher quality protein, I said a higher quality feeds likely using additional ingredients. Or something to that effect.
Most cheap feeds protein will be from by products.
quality feeds will like have added pre or probiotic or both. Also likely to have essential oils added to the feed also. Also high quality amino acids.
Here is what is listed on the quality feed bag
View attachment 2483930
you are not likely to find some of that in budget feeds.

Oh I am sure you wont see that stuff on lower quality feeds, but is all that necessary for the birds diet and health or just feel good and fluffy stuff? Marigold for deeper color eggs. If you sell eggs, that'd be a nice touch, but not essential for the birds health. Not to mention, my B hole is colorblind so it don't care either about the richness of the egg : There's also that high quality word again. Essential oils from Cinnamon etc. The word 'essential' how specifically are they marketing it as? Essential, as in essential for the birds health, or just, because when you extract oils from that stuff they are called 'essential oils'? If it is actually essential for the birds health, then why don't the rest of them have it too, and why is this kind of knowledge not much more readily available, especially in a community like ours where this kind of stuff is our main focus?

Again, I am not trying to pick on you, or call you out, but trying to see whether all the extra stuff that sounds good, smells good, looks good, feels good, and of course drives the price way up, is actually necessary. I am sure we could feed our girls Caviar from Baluga Whales too, along with hand picked and straightened Saffron strands, served in a single origin pollinated vanilla bean pod too but at what price? While we go Oh WOW that's good stuff!!, does the chicken care or is it even capable of discerning the difference? Why give a bottle of Dom Perignon to a wino who won't have a clue how to appreciate it and just wants to get drunk, when Mad Dog works just as good?

I do want to thank you though for the conversation and keeping it civil. I do realize I can get annoying sometimes.

Thank you
Aaron

 

[alwaystj9]

I feel guilty. I fed Purina until the local feed store quit carrying Purina when they substantially increased the order minimums for their feed dealers. I then fed local but the local feed mill was our area's first victim of Tractor Supply moving in. I now go to the locally-owned non-TSC feed store and say "I need 50# of Lay Pellets, 50# of Scratch and a bag of whole corn." Then I make a face at the total and write out a check...

 

[RoosterML]

Oh I am sure you wont see that stuff on lower quality feeds, but is all that necessary for the birds diet and health or just feel good and fluffy stuff? Marigold for deeper color eggs. If you sell eggs, that'd be a nice touch, but not essential for the birds health. Not to mention, my B hole is colorblind so it don't care either about the richness of the egg : There's also that high quality word again. Essential oils from Cinnamon etc. The word 'essential' how specifically are they marketing it as? Essential, as in essential for the birds health, or just, because when you extract oils from that stuff they are called 'essential oils'? If it is actually essential for the birds health, then why don't the rest of them have it too, and why is this kind of knowledge not much more readily available, especially in a community like ours where this kind of stuff is our main focus?

Again, I am not trying to pick on you, or call you out, but trying to see whether all the extra stuff that sounds good, smells good, looks good, feels good, and of course drives the price way up, is actually necessary. I am sure we could feed our girls Caviar from Baluga Whales too, along with hand picked and straightened Saffron strands, served in a single origin pollinated vanilla bean pod too but at what price? While we go Oh WOW that's good stuff!!, does the chicken care or is it even capable of discerning the difference? Why give a bottle of Dom Perignon to a wino who won't have a clue how to appreciate it and just wants to get drunk, when Mad Dog works just as good?

I do want to thank you though for the conversation and keeping it civil. I do realize I can get annoying sometimes.

Thank you
Aaron

You’re annoying but that’s ok. J/K the marigold extract not needed for bird health.
Here is an example.
This feed company uses yucca extra to inhibit to growth of cocci in its starter feeds. Others will use medicated feed for that purpose. I’d like to keep any meds out of animals I may potentially eat.

 

[WTCH Ho Dog]

In the US, "Organic" pricing is a factor of three components.

1) Cache. Marketing. Profit. You are, in part, paying for the ability to proclaim your use of Organic feed, like you pay to wear the Louis Vuitton (sp?) logo on your handbag. Its conspicuous consumption like a handmade silk tie - a piece of expensive frivolity which serves no purpose other than to advertise that you can afford to do so.

2) Scale. Organic feeds, due to their higher expense, are less in demand. While economies of scale grow ever smaller with volume, it remains considerably more economical to buy, store, mill, package, label, distribute, stock, and sell non-Organic feed than Organic feed - where every error, loss, or expiration of the product has to be spread across fewer actual product sales. Moreover, there is less competition on pricing for the raw ingredients, so input costs are higher, too.

3) Remember how I mentioned input costs??? Regulatory Capture by major market players has ensured that any producer much smaller than Purina/General Mills, Cargill, Tyson Foods, ConAgra etc can not afford the regulatory and reporting requirements needed to document that the entire chain of production, land, seed, growing, transport, milling, etc meets Organic standards. Jack and Jill Farmer, on 10,000 acres of property in Grainfield, NE can grow crops using the descendants of the seed corn their great great granpappy brought out west in the 1800s, grow it in native dirt with nothing but rainwater, harvest it, take it to their own millstone on property, grind it, bag it, and they still can't sell it as "Organic". Nor can they sell the grain to Purina as "Organic". That it is literally true does not make it LEGALLY true. Quite deliberately, as a bar to competition.

If that's how you choose to spend your money, promoting some big business in the name of saving the planet, its not for me to say otherwise. It is, after all, your money - not mine. Much as I would enjoy shooting fish in the proverbial barrel as a political discussion, BYC is not the place for it.

However, I will *briefly* address that spooky word, "poison". At least, to the extent that one can address the hint of a shadow, without more substance. Every trace metal naturally occurring in seeds and grains is a poison, IN SUFFICIENT QUANTITY. The Phrase "the dosage is the poison" expresses a medical truth.

Too little of Potassium or Sodium in your body and you will die. Its absolutely necessary to the regulation of our cardiovascular system. Too much? You die. They are "poisons". Sucrose - simple sugar - the basic carbohydrate used by the body for energy production. Too much? You die. Along the spectrum, there are horrible conditions associated with an excess of sugar in the bloodstream. Search Glucotoxicity and Glucose Toxicity - hint: you know them by other names.

Soy products contain isoflavones, estrogen-like chemicals which bind to the body's estrogen receptors (weakly) and can cause an imbalance in our endocrine systems with a host of related maladies. But those organic, all natural, compounds aren't "poison", except in their dosage. Unless you live in CA, where prop 65 would put a warning label on the Human Body for such hazardous, all natural, chemical compounds as Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Testosterone, Estrogen, and Progesterone, among others.

Have a great morning - I'm going to go sip another cup of hot poison: dihydrogen monoxide, sucrose, caffeine, acrymalides, and a bunch of things whose chemical names I don't know off the top of my head. Someone slap a prop 65 warning on my coffee.

/edit apologies for tone. I'm not fit for human company before my second cup.

I seriously like your style. As a beef producer, mainly seedstock (breeding quality cows and bulls), we do market the occasional steer that doesn’t measure up as a breeding quality animal. Freemartin heifers also (sterile female twin). We can market them as ‘all natural’ without a lick of regulation. Slap the ‘organic’ label, and I’d likely be dead before we could jump through all the hoops.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I seriously like your style. As a beef producer, mainly seedstock (breeding quality cows and bulls), we do market the occasional steer that doesn’t measure up as a breeding quality animal. Freemartin heifers also (sterile female twin). We can market them as ‘all natural’ without a lick of regulation. Slap the ‘organic’ label, and I’d likely be dead before we could jump through all the hoops.

I never knew what those heifer twins were called

 

[Madie'sOddFlock]

Believe me, I totally get not having the money for expensive grain, I would never feed organic simply because I go through 50 lbs of grain per day in the summer and 25 lbs + corn and sunflower seeds in the winter and I would be severely in debt if I paid that much for feed. But I also refuse to ever buy DuMOR even as cheap as it is. A good friend of mine once had half their flock die from switching to DuMOR and the next time they tried a large quantity of their flock got horribly sick. I've used it once and the hens stopped laying for a week... I just don't trust them, but I honestly don't trust practically any brand from any TSC around here. They just don't know how to care for the grain properly. I've never received more moldy, bug-infested, or brittle/poorly bagged grain as I have from TSC.
We use Nutrena which we can get for just over $12 here and our birds are healthier, happier, and lay more than they have on any other feed we've fed them(including a period of time when we tried organic).

 

[WTCH Ho Dog]

I never knew what those heifer twins were called

And now you do . Around 80% of heifer-bull twins will be sterile females (freemartin). I’ve had heifer twins where one was a freemartin and the other conceived and calved normally.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

And now you do . Around 80% of heifer-bull twins will be sterile females (freemartin). I’ve had heifer twins where one was a freemartin and the other conceived and calved normally.

Huh. I always was told two female twins would be fertile but they would all be sterile with a twin brother

 

[Dhkoenig]

Okay here is a question for which I will be kicked in the knickers....The Layer Pellet thing...mine hate them so much ( I know that is rare - but maybe because i give them micro-greens, scratch, worms, grit, shells, herbs, quinoa, arugula, fennel, tomatoes, berries....). So my question is - if a chicken were to just happen to be a wild chicken out there in the world with no farmer-mommy - they wouldn't eat pellets right? So just curious why this is such an essential thing. Not denying that it is, just would love to be better persuaded. Just while we are on the topic of pellets. I ended up buying two brands that have pellets mixed in with other nutrients and soaking it all so that they get the benefit of the pellets as they eat the other stuff - but the highlight of our time together is when i head down to the coop in the morning and greet them with goodies. HELP I am a chicken enabler