Is it worth the extra $$

[Ascholten]

If you feed you’re chickens with cheap feed they problably won’t get sick in the normal lifespan of a chicken. Which is only about 2 years.

A chicken only lives 2 years? oh dear, what are you doing to them? I have a bunch that are that old at least and very healthy and egg laying. Big Red is probably pushing 5 now. If yours are kicking it at 2, something is going very wrong for you. Man I hope that is a typo.

Aaron

 

[Vampiric_Conure]

Just throwing my 2 cents in... I buy whatever I can afford. I would love to get organic feed, but you pay out the nose for it around here. I figure a decent feed from a local supplier is good enough. I know what is grown around here (Well, in theory, anyways, LOL) so I'm confident my birds' food is okay.

 

[Ascholten]

Vampiric, that's pretty much what most people do. If a certain brand was 'horrible' it'd soon be outed and there'd be outrage and nobody would buy it.

Now with the prices skyrocketing on everything, Id bet that even more people are going to the 'chicken food' isle and looking ok, which one is the cheapest per pound.

organic is way more costly no matter where you buy it from... from my experience. I'll take the cheaper stuff, or if you are fortunate enough to live by a grain mill, have them grind it and sell it to you right there.

Aaron

 

[Alohacayo]

“The main problem with soy in aminal feed is that, in general, its gmo soy and contains residues of poisons (round up).
If you eat the eggs and meat from non organic fed chickens you will eat small amounts of residues too.”

Partially, possibly true. How many rodent feces, insect body parts, mold & fungal spores are allowed in even “organic” and or non-gmo crops? Nothing you eat, drink, touch is without residue that can harm you. Literally nothing.

“There is prove that eating too much gmo feed can cause miscarriages with cattle and pigs. I don’t know what the effects are when you eat many eggs or meat from animals fed with gmo/poisoned soy. But I ‘d rather be safe than sorry. The feed industry’s number 1 concern is making money. And it’s not caring for peoples / animal health .”

I was completely unable to find any legitimate study that came to this conclusion.

The anecdote I did find, which seems to have started this whole “my pigs went sterile/miscarried” was from a farmer in Iowa in the early 2000’s. He planted new seed from a “different” company in 2000. He then claimed all his hogs failed to reproduce. He claimed farmers around him, feeding that same 2000 crop had same problem.

The university was called in. It was true this farmer experienced severe hog reproductive problems. It was linked to the 2000 forage crops.

But

It had nothing to do with gmo. That years crop was heavily contaminated by mycotoxins. The grain had been stored in unclean/contaminated grain silos. The mycotoxins caused the reproductive harm. They’re actually lucky the animals didn’t just up & die. Mycotoxins are extremely toxic and usually it’s lethal to anything that eats enough. Oh, and FTR, mycotoxins are extremely hard to keep out of grain crops (corn is always a concern, gmo or not).

Someday I’ll tell you about fescue & pregnant mares. Or sorghum and cattle.

If you’ve got studies showing gmo crops cause reproductive loss in livestock, please share?

The corporate food industry is giving the consumer exactly what the consumer demands. Extremely cheap, abundant food.

No matter how you slice it, a producer is not going to spend one penny more than they have to in order to deliver what the consumer will pay for. Killing the consumer is really bad for business.

By all means, read labels, push for labels on all products. Eat food that is as clean as possible. Pay local producers that raise their product the way you want the price they need to get in order to stay in business. But while that may (or may not!) make a health difference to you, there is nothing wrong with abundant and inexpensive foods, and personally as long as I’m not bathing myself or my animals in round-up, I’m more concerned about bacterial or fungal contamination … (I barely survived sepsis from salmonella, there is much out there that’ll kill you faster…)

 

[Alohacayo]

https://www.myfearlesskitchen.com/how-much-hormone-are-we-talking-about/

This little blog post actually did a pretty good job of parsing the information. There is a lot of estrogen in a lot of foods.

To add; soy gets a bad rap because it’s heavy in isoflavones. Those are precursors to all sorts of hormonal responses in people (& animals). But in a “normal” diet there is no harmful affects for most people or animals. Effective diet control can be summed up by “Eat food. Not so much. Mostly plants.” Micheal Pollan

Actual chemical residue in commercial food in the USA is really not an issue to be worried about. From personal and professional experience, be more worried about fungal, viral and bacterial contamination …

I can also guarantee that if commercial grain products fed to our livestock was a problem, there’d be howling so loud it’d block the sun.

Side note and questions to anyone worried about chemical residue in foodstuffs—

What is in your water?
Do you test?
Do you request test results from your municipal supply?
Do you filter your tap water?
Do you clean/sterilize all water supply equipment on a schedule?
If you collect rain- does it collect from a sterile/clean surface?
Do you store it correctly?

There is a whole lot in our water supply that should get much more attention.

And, if you and your animals aren’t drinking reverse osmosis water, well, you’re drinking all sorts of drugs/hormones, chemical run off, bacteria, funguses and viruses.

Watch out for that di-hydrogen monoxide poisoning.

 

[littledog]

Lots of good information here, posted by folks who have a lot more nutritional knowledge than I do about organics, GMOs etc.

But I do have some knowledge about supply chains, so if you're trying to decide between a common, large-scale name brand like Purina and a less-expensive store brand like Dumar, in all likelihood they are the same. Definitely compare the labels, but many store brands come out of the exact same vat as the name brands. The feed mills mix their feeds according to Purina's recipe, then once they've fulfilled the volume Purina requested for that shipment, the rest of the same mix is relabeled for Dumor (Tractor Supply) Kirkland (Costco) etc.

 

[Mykatzrmykidz2]

Newb here. My two cents: having been a "sheeple" and "trusting BIG CORPS" has lead me to lose my health. Something that is VERY difficult to get back. Choose your pocket book over your health and you WILL PAY for that in the long run! As for me, I will raise my chickens completely and utterly ORGANIC. No more poisons in my food, on my food, in my body. It's like putting that mRNA Gene Therapy Poison into your body thinking it will protect/save you from a bug that has a 99.95% Survival rate! Your choice, no judgement, but as for me, nothing non organic, nothing GENETICALLY MODIFIED will pass my lips ever again.

 

[BDutch]

A chicken only lives 2 years? oh dear, what are you doing to them? I have a bunch that are that old at least and very healthy and egg laying. Big Red is probably pushing 5 now. If yours are kicking it at 2, something is going very wrong for you. Man I hope that is a typo.

Aaron

I was talking of all the chickens. Including laying hens in egg factories and the chicken meat industry, the chicken feed is produced for . Besides this majority, lots of byc keepers cull their chickens within 5 months (chicken wings) or 3 years (laying hens). My estimated average is that chickens in general live no longer than 2 years.

I like my chickens, don’t eat them. I rarely eat meat and never the recognisable meat . I like it if my chickens can stick around. But the feed I can buy here at the mill or the gardening/animal shop is not made for these caring hobbyists with older hens or a mixed flock with roosters. Even online the choice is very limited.

If I could buy all flock feed from locally or European produced ingredient's I would. It’s just not for sale overhere.

The mighty feed industry in the Netherlands sells only a few types of chicken feed. Basically their feed is with gmo soy or it’s organic feed without soy. And now there is a third type of chicken feed on the market made mainly from waste left overs from the human feed industry. All feed they sell for laying hens has too much calcium for my flock. My older chickens lay probably around 50 - 60 eggs a year. The ingredient’s of the layer feed is meant for hens that produce at least 300 eggs each year. They do sell mixed grains too. But the bagged mixed grains are not a complete feed and only meant for extra’s or truly free range chickens.
Therefore I give about 50 -70% organic layer and 30 - 50% mixed grains depending on the season. When possible the chickens free range a few hours a day in our mostly organic garden. A balance between safety and happy chickens. My flock has a healthy life this way. Having to deal with a sick chicken is a very rare exception.

 

[Ascholten]

Oh good, you ARE taking care of them. Yes though, I understand. With that in mind, I wonder, if someone had some time and a few $$ how hard would it be to gather up your own grains, mix and grind your own, so now you KNOW what it is, what's in it and how healthy it is. Seems to me that, there IS a need for it, surprised someone has not hopped onto that yet.

Aaron

 

[Folly's place]

I'm going to comment on the post several pages ago about animal feed recalls. It happens to be mostly raw meat diets sold for dogs and cats, because of bacterial contamination. Not suprising at all!
And @Alohacayo is so right!
Mary